Part 5 (2/2)
The leaders cringed and winced against their bars. One wheeler, accepting under protest a wipe with the double thong across his quarters, threw himself widely off the pole; the other, b.u.t.ting like a goat, bounced into his collar; and so, starting the whole coach, the painted, varnished, glittering toy pa.s.sed on, in clouds of dust, through all that wealth of oak and fern, and hill and dale, and gleaming glade and darkling dell, that make a midsummer fairy-land of Windsor Forest on your way to Ascot Races.
The man who had thus pulled up his team for alteration of their harness was a well-dressed, clean-made, good-looking young fellow enough. From the crown of his white hat to the soles of his varnished boots he was a ”gentleman” all over; and if the choice little posy in his b.u.t.ton-hole betrayed a suspicion of dandyism, it was redeemed by the frankness of manner, the good-humoured and unaffected _bonhomie_ cultivated by our young warriors of the Household Brigade, horse and foot.
Frank Vanguard, who belonged to the former of these services, was now steering the regimental drag and a roof-ful of brother officers to the great Olympic gathering of modern times on the Cup Day at Ascot.
Good spirits, good humour, banter, repartee, and nonsense, reigned supreme, const.i.tuting a combination called ”chaff;” just as light wine, effervescence, and fragrant herbs, in due proportions, become ”cup.” The driver had enough to do, with a free but not very handy team and a crowded road, to the whole of which every carriage he pa.s.sed a.s.sumed a prescriptive right; yet could he find leisure to answer in corresponding vein a volley of jesting remarks shot freely at him from behind.
”Frank,” says a fresh-coloured young warrior, well qualified to enact the part of Achilles, so long as that hero was yet in girl's clothes, ”there's a nice bit of galloping ground over the rise. You're not driving a hea.r.s.e! _Do_ spring 'em a bit, and give 'em the silk!”
”I'm not so fond of the silk as _you_ are!” answered Frank, touching his near leader lightly under the bars, as a fly-fisher throws his line.
”You used to get double-thonged pretty handsomely at Eton, I remember, but it hasn't done you much good.”
”Rating and flogging,” answered the other, puffing out volumes of smoke; ”that's the way to spoil your young entry!”
”Waste of whipcord,” says a graver youth, desirous, of all things in life, that he should become a Master of Hounds. ”They never made you steady from hare!”
”You got that, Charlie!” laughed another; but Charlie, ere this, has found a new interest in spasms of anxiety lest they should be pa.s.sed by a rival drag, coming up in clouds of dust on their quarter, like an enemy's frigate through the smoke of battle.
”Who's this cove?” he exclaimed eagerly. ”Sits well on his box--nice short-legged team--keeps his whip quiet, and drives to an inch.”
”Sn.o.b!” replies a sententious captain, with long moustaches, ”by name, Picard. Wouldn't have him in the Club. Did something abroad. Quite right. Heavy load and a roughish lot. Team, I should say, better bred than the company. Don't let him get by. D--n it all, Frank! that's a close shave!”
It _was_ a close shave! Nothing but the affability with which the near wheeler, having recovered its temper, answered both rein and thong, kept the coach out of a roadside ditch, which would have sent one of the most promising coveys of Her Majesty's peculiar defenders into the thick of Her Majesty's preserves.
In keeping ahead of his rival, Frank Vanguard pa.s.sed a barouche, from the inside of which was turned up to him a fair statue-like face, with dark eyes and hair, that flushed faintly under its white lace veil, as it gave him a little modest nod of recognition. No wonder he looked back; no wonder, thus looking, he brought his wheel so near the edge of a chasm, that one turn more would have turned him over, and that Miss Hallaton, holding her breath, shut both hands tight, while her father exclaimed:
”Nearest thing I ever saw in my life! Who's driving, Helen? He bowed to _you_.”
And Helen, answering demurely--”Captain Vanguard, I _think_, papa”--reflected how, had he been upset and hurt, the whole brightness of _her_ day would have darkened into sorrow, and how she wished he wouldn't be quite so reckless, though she liked him for being so bold.
Behind their barouche came a tax-cart, and behind the tax-cart another open carriage, in which drove the party who had a.s.sembled at dinner in No. 40, not very long ago.
Uncle Joseph, with his back to the horses, sat in unusual pomp and magnificence, pointing out the humours, explaining the races, and generally laying down the law, as though he combined in his own person the Masters.h.i.+p of the Buckhounds with the authority of the whole Jockey Club. Owner of a pretty little villa on the Thames, he had invited his kinswoman, the lady of his affections, and Mr. Goldthred to stay with him for Ascot Races. Therefore ”The Lilies” smiled gay in chintz and muslin and fresh-cut flowers. Therefore Uncle Joseph, basking in a June sun and the light of Miss Ross's eyes, felt ten, twenty years younger--hopeful, enterprising, volatile as a boy!
Mrs. Lascelles was at all times a person of equable spirits. Perhaps it would be more correct to say, that she possessed that self-command which forbids emotion to appear on the surface. She looked bright, smiling, gracious as usual; her l.u.s.trous eyes, rosy lips, and white teeth, enhanced by bonnet, dress, pink-tinted parasol, general sense of triumph, and flush of the summer's day. Poor Goldthred, sitting over against her, strove to stifle certain misgivings that such a G.o.ddess was too n.o.ble a prize for creatures of common mould, and vaguely wished he had kept away from the flame, round which, like some singed moth, he could not help fluttering in senseless, suicidal infatuation!
Parties of pleasure cannot always be equally pleasant to everybody concerned. Miss Ross, too, seemed out of spirits and pre-occupied; less gracious to Goldthred, less confiding with Mrs. Lascelles, less susceptible to the attentions of Uncle Joseph himself. Jin, as she was now called in her own set, sank back among the cus.h.i.+ons, buried in strange, sad memories, that made her unconscious of the noise, the dust, the glare, the confusion of tongues, the crush of carriages, all the charms of the expedition. This, because playing at a cottage door, shouting vigorously as they pa.s.sed, she had caught a glimpse of a ruddy, dark-eyed urchin, who reminded her painfully of her child. It was but one glance, as he sat triumphant in the dust, waving two dirty little hands round a black curly head, yet it was enough. She was back in sunny France once more, with something to trust in, something to work for, something to love. Looking in Uncle Joseph's battered old face and cloudy eyes, rather near her own, she could scarcely repress a movement of abhorrence and disgust; while he, good man, under the impression that he was more delightful than usual, inveighed against the furious driving, the extravagant habits, and general recklessness of the Household Cavalry.
”He's _very_ good-looking!” observed Jin, rousing herself to make a remark that she knew would be unpalatable to her listener; ”isn't he, Rose?”
”_Very!_” a.s.sented Mrs. Lascelles; ”but you should see him in regimentals, my dear. I think I'll ask him to dinner.”
Symptoms of mental disquietude in Uncle Joseph and young Goldthred. Each marvelling that a transitory glimpse, while pa.s.sing at a hand-gallop, should have made so vivid an impression; and the latter wondering whether, if he were to alter the whole tenor of his life, to arm his chest with a cuira.s.s, and plunge his legs into jack-boots, Mrs.
Lascelles would deem him also worth looking at in ”regimentals,” as an officer's uniform is called by n.o.body but ladies who have never been in a regiment.
No amus.e.m.e.nt, except perhaps cricket, seems so popular as racing, yet out of every hundred people who attend Epsom, Ascot, or Doncaster, do you suppose five know one favourite from another, or, indeed, ever look at the n.o.ble animal, except he shows temper in his canter before the start? Helen Hallaton, though she dearly loved a horse, could not even have told you how many were going for the race about to commence as she took up her station on the Course; and yet the pretty pageant, bright and blooming like a June flower-bed, pa.s.sed under her very nose. But she could have given a clear account of the masterly manner in which Frank Vanguard brought his coach into the enclosure; how he laid it alongside Viscount Jericho's, with as much pomp and little less manoeuvring than moors an iron-clad at regulation distance from her consort; with what easy magnificence he flung his reins to right and left, condescendingly facetious the while with sundry muscular cads, who put their shoulders to the wheels and deftly extracted the pole. She could have told you how he leaped like a Mercury from his box, how carefully he laid aside his whip in its case, how with a silk handkerchief he dusted his white hat, his s.h.i.+rt-front, his curling moustaches, and the places where his whiskers were coming fast; lastly, how he took from the inside of the coach a beautiful little nosegay, daintily tied up, and stuck it into his b.u.t.ton-hole, causing her to admit in her own mind that she wouldn't mind wearing one of those flowers herself, if she could have it without its being given her.
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