A TOSS-UP.
“One can be but what one is born.”
If any one had asked the Count Lory de Vasselot who and what he was, he
would probably have answered that he was a member of the English Jockey
Club. For he held that that distinction conferred greater honour upon him
than the accident of his birth, which enabled him to claim for
grandfather the first Count de Vasselot, one of Murat's aides-de-camp, a
brilliant, dashing cavalry officer, a boyhood's friend of the great
Napoleon. Lory de Vasselot was, moreover, a cavalry officer himself, but
had not taken part in any of the enterprises of an emperor who held that
to govern Frenchmen it is necessary to provide them with a war every four
years.
“Bon Dieu!” he told his friends, “I did not sleep for two nights after I
was elected to that great club.”
Lory de Vasselot, moreover, did his best to live up to his position. He
never, for instance, had his clothes made in Paris. His very gloves came
from a little shop in Newmarket, where only the seamiest and clumsiest of
hand-coverings are provided, and horn buttons are a _sine qua non_.
To desire to be mistaken for an Englishman is a sure sign that you belong
to the very best Parisian set, and Lory de Vasselot's position was an
enviable one, for so long as he kept his hat on and stood quite still and
did not speak, he might easily have been some one connected with the
British turf. It must, of course, be understood that the similitude of de
Vasselot's desire was only an outward one. We all think that every other
nation would fain be English, but as all other countries have a like
pitying contempt for us, there is perhaps no harm done. And it is to be
presumed that if some candid friend were to tell de Vasselot that the
moment he uncovered his hair, or opened his lips, or made a single
movement, he was hopelessly and unmistakably French from top to toe, he
would not have been sorely distressed.
It will be remembered that the Third Napoleon--the last of that strange
dynasty--raised himself to the Imperial throne--made himself, indeed, the
most powerful monarch in Europe--by statecraft, and not by power of
sword. With the magic of his name he touched the heart of the most
impetuous people in the world, and upon the uncertain, and, as it is
whispered, not always honest suffrage of the plebiscite, climbed to the
unstable height of despotism. For years he ruled France with a sort of
careless cynicism, and it was only when his health failed that his hand
began to relax its grip. In the scramble for place and power, the
grandson of the first Count de Vasselot might easily have gained a prize,
but Lory seemed to have no ambition in that direction. Perhaps he had no
taste for ministry or bureau, nor cared to cultivate the subtle knowledge
of court and cabinet, which meant so much at this time. His tastes were
rather those of the camp; and, failing war, he had turned his thoughts to
sport. He had hunted in England and fished in Norway. In the winter of
1869, he went to Africa for big game, and, returning in the early weeks
of March, found France and his dear Paris gayer, more insouciant, more
brilliant than ever.
For the empire had never seemed more secure than it did at this moment,
had never stood higher in the eyes of the world, had never boasted so
lavish a court. Paris was at her best, and Lory de Vasselot exclaimed
aloud, after the manner of his countrymen, at the sight of the young buds
and spring flowers around the Lac in the Bois de Boulogne, as he rode
there this fresh morning.
He had only arrived in Paris the night before, and, dining at the Cercle
Militaire, had accepted the loan of a horse.
“One will at all events see one's friends in the wood,” he said. But
riding there in an ultra-English suit of cords at the fashionable hour,
he found that he had somehow missed the fashion. The alleys, which had
been popular a year ago, were now deserted; for there is nothing so
fickle as social taste, and the riders were all at the other side of the
Route de Longchamps.
Lory turned his horse's head in that direction, and was riding leisurely,
when he heard an authoritative voice apparently directed towards himself.
He was in one of the narrow _allées_, “reserved for cavaliers,” and,
turning, perceived that the soft sandy gravel had prevented his hearing
the approach of other riders--a man and a woman. And the woman's horse
was beyond control. It was a little, fiery Arab, leaping high in the air
at each stride, and timing a nasty forward jerk of the head at the worst
moment for its rider's comfort.
There was no time to do anything but touch his own trained charger with
the spur and gallop ahead. He turned in his saddle. The Arab was gaining
on him, and gradually leaving behind the heavy horse and weighty rider
who were giving chase. The woman, with a set white face, was jerking at
the bridle with her left hand in an odd, mechanical, feeble way, while
with her right, she held to the pommel of her saddle. But she was swaying
forward in an unmistakable manner. She was only half conscious, and in a
moment must fall.
Lory glanced behind her, and saw a stout built man, with a fair moustache
and a sunburnt face, riding his great horse in the stirrups like a
jockey, his face alight with that sudden excitement which sometimes
blazes in light blue eyes. He made a quick gesture, which said as plainly
as words--“You must act, and quickly; I can do nothing.”
And the three thundered on. The rides in the Bois de Boulogne are all
bordered on either side by thick trees. If Lory de Vasselot pulled
across, he would send the maddened Arab into the forest, where the first
low branch must of a necessity batter in its rider's head. He rode on,
gradually edging across to what in France is the wrong side of the road.
“Hold on, madame; hold on,” he said, in a quick low voice.
But the woman did not seem to hear him. She had dropped the bridle now,
and the Arab had thrown it forward over its head.
Then Lory gradually reined in. The woman was reeling in the saddle as the
Arab thundered alongside. The wind blew back the long habit, and showed
her foot to be firmly in the stirrup.
“Stirrup, madame!” shouted Lory, as if she were miles away. “Mon Dieu,
your stirrup!”
But she only looked ahead with glazed eyes.
Then, edging nearer with a delicate spur, de Vasselot shook off his own
right stirrup, and, leaning down, lifted the fainting woman with his
right arm clean out of the saddle. He rested her weight upon his thigh,
and, feeling cautiously with his foot, found her stirrup and kicked it
free. He pulled up slowly, and, drawing aside, allowed the lady's
companion to pass him at a steady gallop after the Arab.
The lady was now in a dead faint, her dark red hair hanging like a rope
across de Vasselot's arm. She was, fortunately, not a big woman; for it
was no easy position to find one's self in, on the top, thus, of a large
horse with a senseless burden and no help in sight. He managed, however,
to dismount, and rather breathlessly carried the lady to the shade of the
trees, where he laid her with her head on a mound of rising turf, and,
lifting aside her hair, saw her face for the first time.
“Ah! That dear baroness!” he exclaimed; and, turning, he found himself
bowing rather stiffly to the gentleman, who had now returned, leading the
runaway horse. He was not, it may be mentioned, the baron.
While the two men were thus regarding each other in a polite silence, the
baroness opened a pair of remarkably bright brown eyes, at first with
wonder, and then with understanding, and finally with wonder again when
they lighted on de Vasselot.
“Lory!” she cried. “But where have you fallen from?”
“It must have been from heaven, baroness,” he replied, “for I assuredly
came at the right moment.”
He stood looking down at her--a lithe, neat, rather small-made man. Then
he turned to attend to his horse. The baroness was already busy with her
hair. She rose to her feet and smoothed her habit.
“Ah, good!” she laughed. “There is no harm done. But you saved my life,
my dear Lory. One cannot have two opinions as to that. If it were not
that the colonel is watching us, I should embrace you. But I have not
introduced you. This is Colonel Gilbert--my dear and good cousin, Lory de
Vasselot. The colonel is from Bastia, by the way, and the Count de
Vasselot pretends to be a Corsican. I mention it because it is only
friendly to tell you that you have something more than the weather and my
gratitude in common.”
She laughed as she spoke; then became suddenly grave, and sat down again
with her hand to her eyes.
“And I am going to faint,” she added, with ghastly lips that tried to
smile, “and nobody but you two men.”
“It is the reaction,” said Colonel Gilbert, in his soothing way. But he
exchanged a quick glance with de Vasselot. “It will pass, baroness.”
“It is well to remember at such a moment that one is a sportswoman,”
suggested de Vasselot.
“And that one has de Vasselot blood in one's veins, you mean. You may as
well say it.” She rose as she spoke, and looked from one to the other
with a brave laugh. “Bring me that horse,” she said.
De Vasselot conveyed by one inimitable gesture that he admired her
spirit, but refused to obey her. Colonel Gilbert smiled contemplatively,
He was of a different school--of that school of Frenchmen which owes its
existence to Napoleon III.--impassive, almost taciturn--more British than
the typical Briton. De Vasselot, on the contrary, was quick and
vivacious. His fine-cut face and dark eyes expressed a hundred things
that his tongue had no time to put into words. He was hard and brown and
sunburnt, which at once made him manly despite his slight frame.
“Ah,” he cried, with a gay laugh, “that is better. But seriously, you
know, you should have a patent stirrup--”
He broke off, described the patent stirrup in three gestures, how it
opened and released the foot. He showed the rider falling, the horse
galloping away, the released lady-rider rising to her feet and satisfying
herself that no bones were broken--all in three more gestures.
“Voilà!” he said; “I shall send you one.”
“And you as poor--as poor,” said the baroness, whose husband was of the
new nobility, which is based, as all the world knows, on solid
manufacture. “My friend, you cannot afford it.”
“I cannot afford to lose _you_” he said, with a sudden gravity, and with
eyes which, to the uninitiated, would undoubtedly have conveyed the
impression that she was the whole world to him. “Besides,” he added, as
an after-thought, “it is only sixteen francs.”
The baroness threw up her gay brown eyes.
“Just Heaven,” she exclaimed, “what it is to be able to inspire such
affection--to be valued at sixteen francs!”
Then--for she was as quick and changeable as himself--she turned, and
touched his arm with her thickly-gloved hand.
“Seriously, my cousin, I cannot thank you, and you, Colonel Gilbert, for
your promptness and your skill. And as to my stupid husband, you know, he
has no words; when I tell him, he will only grunt behind his great
moustache, and he will never thank you, and will never forget. Never!
Remember that.” And with a wave of the riding-whip, which was attached to
her wrist, she described eternity.
De Vasselot turned with a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders, and busied
himself with the girths of his saddle. At the touch and the sight of the
buckles, his eyes became grave and earnest. And it is not only Frenchmen
who cherish this cult of the horse, making false gods of saddle and
bridle, and a sacred temple of the harness-room. Very seriously de
Vasselot shifted the side-saddle from the Arab to his own large and
gentle horse--a wise old charger with a Roman nose, who never wasted his
mettle in park tricks, but served honestly the Government that paid his
forage.
The Baroness de Mélide watched the transaction in respectful silence, for
she too took _le sport_ very seriously, and had attended a course of
lectures at a riding-school on the art of keeping and using harness. Her
colour was now returning--that brilliant, delicate colour which so often
accompanies dark red hair--and she gave a little sigh of resignation.
Colonel Gilbert looked at her, but said nothing. He seemed to admire her,
in the same contemplative way that he had admired the moon rising behind
the island of Capraja from the Place St. Nicholas in Bastia.
De Vasselot noted the sigh, and glanced sharply at her over the shoulder
of the big charger.
“Of what are you thinking?” he said.
“Of the millennium, mon ami”
“The millennium?”
“Yes,” she answered, gathering the bridle; “when women shall perhaps be
allowed to be natural. Our mothers played at being afraid--we play at
being courageous.”
As she spoke she placed a neat foot in Colonel Gilbert's hand, who lifted
her without effort to the saddle. De Vasselot mounted the Arab, and they
rode slowly homewards by way of the Avenue de Longchamps, through the
Porte Dauphine, and up that which is now the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne,
which was quiet enough at this time of day. The baroness was inclined to
be silent. She had been more shaken than she cared to confess to two
soldiers. Colonel Gilbert probably saw this, for he began to make
conversation with de Vasselot.
“You do not come to Corsica,” he said.
“I have never been there--shall never go there,” answered de Vasselot.
“Tell me--is it not a terrible place? The end of the world, I am told. My
mother”--he broke off with a gesture of the utmost despair. “She is
dead!” he interpolated--“always told me that it was the most terrible
place in the world. At my father's death, more than thirty years ago, she
quitted Corsica, and came to live in Paris, where I was born, and where,
if God is good, I shall die.”
“My cousin, you talk too much of death,” put in the baroness, seriously.
“As between soldiers, baroness,” replied de Vasselot, gaily. “It is our
trade. You know the island well, colonel?”
“No, I cannot say that. But I know the Chateau de Vasselot.”
“Now, that is interesting; and I who scarcely know the address! Near
Calvi, is it not? A waste of rocks, and behind each rock at least one
bandit--so my dear mother assured me.”
“It might be cultivated,” answered Colonel Gilbert, indifferently. “It
might be made to yield a small return. I have often thought so. I have
even thought of whiling away my exile by attempting some such scheme. I
once contemplated buying a piece of land on that coast to try. Perhaps
you would sell?”
“Sell!” laughed de Vasselot. “No; I am not such a scoundrel as that. I
would toss you for it, my dear colonel; I would toss you for it, if you
like.”
And as they turned out of the avenue into one of the palatial streets
that run towards the Avenue Victor Hugo, he made the gesture of throwing
a coin into the air.