THE PAINTED BIT.
Baden was at its brightest. The Victoria, the Badischer Hof, the
Stephanie Bauer were crowded. The Kurliste had a dazzling string of
names. Imperial grandeur sauntered in slippers; chiefs, used to be
saluted with “Ave Caesar Imperator,” smoked a papelito in peace over
“Galignani.” Emperors gave a good-day to ministers who made their
thrones beds of thorns, and little kings elbowed great capitalists who
could have bought them all up in a morning's work in the money market.
Statecraft was in its slippers and diplomacy in its dressing-gown.
Statesmen who had just been outwitting each other at the hazard of
European politics laughed good-humoredly as they laid their gold down on
the color. Rivals who had lately been quarreling over the knotty points
of national frontiers now only vied for a twenty-franc rosebud from the
bouquetiere. Knights of the Garter and Knights of the Golden Fleece,
who had hated each other to deadliest rancor with the length of the
Continent between them, got friends over a mutually good book on the
Rastadt or Foret Noir. Brains that were the powder depot of one-half of
the universe let themselves be lulled to tranquil amusement by a fair
idiot's coquetry. And lips that, with a whisper, could loosen the
coursing slips of the wild hell-dogs of war, murmured love to a
princess, led the laugh at a supper at five in the morning, or smiled
over their own caricatures done by Tenniel or Cham.
Baden was full. The supreme empires of demi-monde sent their sovereigns,
diamond-crowned and resistless, to outshine all other principalities and
powers, while in breadth of marvelous skirts, in costliness of cobweb
laces, in unapproachability of Indian shawls and gold embroideries,
and mad fantasies and Cleopatra extravagances, and jewels fit for a
Maharajah, the Zu-Zu was distanced by none.
Among the kings and heroes and celebrities who gathered under the
pleasant shadow of the pine-crowned hills, there was not one in his way
greater than the steeple-chaser, Forest King--certes, there was not one
half so honest.
The Guards' Crack was entered for the Prix de Dames, the sole
representative of England. There were two or three good things out of
French stables,--specially a killing little boy, L'Etoile,--and there
was an Irish sorrel, the property of an Austrian of rank, of which fair
things were whispered; but it was scarcely possible that anything
could stand against the King and that wonderful stride of his which
spread-eagled his field like magic, and his countrymen were well
content to leave their honor and their old renown to “Beauty” and his
six-year-old.
Beauty himself, with a characteristic philosophy, had a sort of
conviction that the German race would set everything square. He stood
either to make a very good thing on it or to be very heavily bit. There
could be no medium. He never hedged in his life; and as it was almost
a practical impossibility that anything the foreign stables could get
together would even be able to land within half a dozen lengths of
the King. Cecil, always willing to console himself, and invariably too
careless to take the chance of adverse accident into account, had come
to Baden, and was amusing himself there dropping a Friedrich d'Or on the
rouge, flirting in the shady alleys of the Lichtenthal, waltzing Lady
Guenevere down the ballroom, playing ecarte with some Serene Highness,
supping with the Zu-Zu and her set, and occupying rooms that a Russian
Prince had had before him, with all the serenity of a millionaire, as
far as memory of money went; with much more than the serenity in other
matters of most millionaires, who, finding themselves uncommonly ill
at ease in the pot-pourri of monarchs and ministers, of beau-monde and
demi-monde, would have given half their newly turned thousands to get
rid of the odor of Capel Court and the Bourse, and to attain the calm,
negligent assurance, the easy, tranquil insolence, the nonchalance with
Princes, and the supremacy among the Free Lances, which they saw and
coveted in the indolent Guardsman.
Bertie amused himself. He might be within a day of his ruin, but that
was no reason why he should not sip his iced sherbet and laugh with a
pretty French actress to-night. His epicurean formulary was the same as
old Herrick's, and he would have paraphrased this poet's famous quatrain
into
Drink a pure claret while you may,
Your “stiff” is still a-flying;
And he who dines so well to-day
To-morrow may be lying,
Pounced down upon by Jews _tout net_,
Or outlawed in a French _guinguette!_
Bertie was a great believer--if the words are not too sonorous and
too earnest to be applied to his very inconsequent views upon any and
everything--in the philosophy of happy accident. Far as it was in him to
have a conviction at all,--which was a thorough-going, serious sort
of thing not by any means his “form,”--he had a conviction that
the doctrine of “Eat, drink, and enjoy, for to-morrow we die” was
a universal panacea. He was reckless to the uttermost stretch of
recklessness, all serene and quiet though his pococurantism and his
daily manner were; and while subdued to the undeviating monotone and
languor of his peculiar set in all his temper and habits, the natural
dare-devil in him took out its inborn instincts in a wildly careless and
gamester-like imprudence with that most touchy tempered and inconsistent
of all coquettes--Fortune.
Things, he thought, could not well be worse with him than they were now.
So he piled all on one coup, and stood to be sunk or saved by the
Prix de Dames. Meanwhile, all the same, he murmured Mussetism to the
Guenevere under the ruins of the Alte Schloss, lost or won a rouleau at
the roulette-wheel, gave a banknote to the famous Isabel for a tea-rose,
drove the Zu-Zu four in hand to see the Flat races, took his guinea
tickets for the Concerts, dined with Princes, lounged arm-in-arm with
Grand Dukes, gave an Emperor a hint as to the best cigars, and charmed a
Monarch by unfolding the secret of the aroma of a Guards' Punch, sacred
to the Household.
Bertie who believed in bivalves but not in heroics, thought it best to
take the oysters first and eschew the despair entirely.
He had one unchangeable quality--insouciance; and he had, moreover, one
unchangeable faith--the King. Lady Guenevere had reached home unnoticed
after the accident of their moonlight stag-hunt. His brother, meeting
him a day or two after their interview, had nodded affirmatively, though
sulkily, in answer to his inquiries, and had murmured that it was “all
square now.” The Jews and the tradesmen had let him leave for Baden
without more serious measures than a menace, more or less insolently
worded. In the same fashion he trusted that the King's running at the
Bad, with the moneys he had on it, would set all things right for a
little while; when, if his family interest, which was great, would get
him his step in the First Life, he thought, desperate as things were,
they might come round again smoothly, without a notorious crash.
“You are sure the King will 'stay,' Bertie?” asked Lady Guenevere, who
had some hundreds in gloves (and even under the rose “sported a pony” or
so more seriously) on the event.
“Certain! But if he don't I promise you as pretty a tableau as your
Asnieres one; for your sake, I'll make the finish as picturesque as
possible. Wouldn't it be well to give me a lock of hair in readiness?”
Her ladyship laughed and shook her head; if a man killed himself, she
did not desire that her gracious name should be entangled with the
folly.
“No; I don't do those things,” she said, with captivating waywardness.
“Besides, though the Oos looks cool and pleasant, I greatly doubt that
under any pressure you would trouble it; suicides are too pronounced for
your style, Bertie.”
“At all events, a little morphia in one's own rooms would be quieter,
and better taste,” said Cecil, while he caught himself listlessly
wondering, as he had wondered at Richmond, if this badinage were to turn
into serious fact--how much would she care.
“May your sins be forgiven you!” cried Chesterfield, the apostle of
training, as he and the Seraph came up to the table where Cecil and
Cos Wentworth were breakfasting in the garden of the Stephanien on the
race-day itself. “Liqueurs, truffles, and every devilment under the
sun?--cold beef, and nothing to drink, Beauty, if you've any conscience
left!”
“Never had a grain, dear boy, since I can remember,” murmured Bertie
apologetically. “You took all the rawness off me at Eton.”
“And you've been taking coffee in bed, I'll swear!” pursued the
cross-examiner.
“What if he have? Beauty's condition can't be upset by a little mocha,
nor mine either,” said his universal defender; and the Seraph shook his
splendid limbs with a very pardonable vanity.
“Ruteroth trains; Ruteroth trains awfully,” put in Cos Wentworth,
looking up out of a great silver flagon of Badminton, with which he was
ending his breakfast; and referring to that Austrian who was to ride the
Paris favorite. “Remember him at La Marche last year, and the racing at
Vincennes--didn't take a thing that could make flesh--muscles like iron,
you know--never touched a soda even----”
“I've trained, too,” said Bertie submissively; “look how I've been
waltzing! There isn't harder work than that for any fellow. A deuxtemps
with the Duchess takes it out of you like any spin over the flat.”
His censurers laughed, but did not give in their point.
“You've run shocking risks, Beauty,” said Chesterfield; “the King's in
fine running-form; don't say he isn't; but you've said scores of times
what a deal of riding he takes. Now, can you tell us yourself that
you're in as hard condition as you were when you won the Military, eh?”
Cecil shook his head with a sigh.
“I don't think I am; I've had things to try me, you see. There was that
Verschoyle's proposal. I did absolutely think at one time she'd marry
me before I could protest against it! Then there was that shock to one's
whole nervous system, when that indigo man, who took Lady Laura's house,
asked us to dinner, and actually thought we should go!--and there was a
scene, you know, of all earthly horrors, when Mrs. Gervase was so near
eloping with me, and Gervase cut up rough, instead of pitying me; and
then the field-days were so many, and so late into the season; and I
exhausted myself so at the Belvoir theatricals at Easter; and I toiled
so atrociously playing 'Almaviva' at your place, Seraph--a private
opera's galley slave's work!--and, altogether, I've had a good many
things to pull me down since the winter,” concluded Bertie, with a
plaintive self-condolence over his truffles.
The rest of his condemning judges laughed, and passed the plea of
sympathy; the Coldstreamer alone remained censorious and untouched.
“Pull you down! You'll never pull off the race if you sit drinking
liqueurs all the morning!” growled that censor. “Look at that!”
Bertie glanced at the London telegram tossed across to him, sent from a
private and confidential agent.
“Betting here--two to one on L'Etoile; Irish Roan offered and taken
freely. Slight decline in closing prices for the King; getting on French
bay rather heavily at midnight. Fancy there's a commission out against
the King. Looks suspicious.” Cecil shrugged his shoulders and raised his
eyebrows a little.
“All the better for us. Take all they'll lay against me. It's as good
as our having a 'Commission out'; and if any cads get one against us it
can't mean mischief, as it would with professional jocks.”
“Are you so sure of yourself, Beauty?”
Beauty shook his head repudiatingly.
“Never am sure of anything, much less of myself. I'm a chameleon, a
perfect chameleon!”
“Are you so sure of the King, then?”
“My dear fellow, no! I ask you in reason, how can I be sure of what
isn't proved? I'm like that country fellow the old story tells of; he
believed in fifteen shillings because he'd once had it in his hand;
others, he'd heard, believed in a pound; but, for his part, he didn't,
because he'd never seen it. Now that was a man who'd never commit
himself; he might had had the Exchequer! I'm the same; I believe the
King can win at a good many things because I've seen him do 'em; but I
can't possibly tell whether he can get this, because I've never ridden
him for it. I shall be able to tell you at three o'clock--but that you
don't care for----”
And Bertie, exhausted with making such a lengthened exposition--the
speeches he preferred were monosyllabic--completed his sins against
training with a long draught of claret-cup.
“Then what the devil do you mean by telling us to pile our pots on you?”
asked the outraged Coldstreamer, with natural wrath.
“Faith is a beautiful sight!” said Bertie, with solemnity.
“Offered on the altar of the Jews!” laughed the Seraph, as he turned him
away from the breakfast table by the shoulders. “Thanks, Beauty; I've
'four figures' on you, and you'll be good enough to win them for me.
Let's have a look at the King. They are just going to walk him over.”
Cecil complied; while he lounged away with the others to the stables,
with a face of the most calm, gentle, weary indifference in the world,
the thought crossed him for a second of how very near he was to the
wind. The figures in his betting-book were to the tune of several
thousands, one way or another. If he won this morning it would be all
right, of course; if he lost--even Beauty, odd mixture of devil-may-care
and languor though he was, felt his lips grow, for the moment, hot and
cold by turns as he thought of that possible contingency.
The King looked in splendid condition; he knew well enough what was up
again, knew what was meant by that extra sedulous dressing-down, that
setting muzzle that had been buckled on him some nights previous, the
limitation put to his drink, the careful trial spins in the gray of the
mornings, the conclusive examination of his plates by a skillful hand;
he knew what was required of him, and a horse in nobler condition never
stepped out in body clothing, as he was ridden slowly down on to the
plains of Iffesheim. The Austrian Dragoon, a Count and a Chamberlain
likewise, who was to ride his only possible rival, the French horse
L'Etoile, pulled his tawny silken mustaches as he saw the great English
hero come up the course, and muttered to himself, “L'affaire est finie.”
L'Etoile was a brilliant enough bay in his fashion, but Count Ruteroth
knew the measure of his pace and powers too thoroughly to expect him to
live against the strides of the Guards' gray.
“My beauty, won't you cut those German fellows down!” muttered Rake, the
enthusiast, in the saddling inclosure. “As for those fools what go agin
you, you'll put them in a hole, and no mistake. French horse, indeed!
Why, you'll spread-eagle all them Mossoos' and Meinherrs' cattle in a
brace of seconds--”
Rake's foe, the head groom, caught him up savagely.
“Won't you never learn decent breeding? When we wins we wins on the
quiet, and when we loses we loses as if we liked it; all that braying,
and flaunting, and boasting is only fit for cads. The 'oss is in tip-top
condition; let him show what he can do over furren ground.”
“Lucky for him, then, that he hasn't got you across the pigskin; you'd
rope him, I believe, as soon as look at him, if it was made worth your
while,” retorted Rake, in caustic wrath; his science of repartee chiefly
lay in a successful “plant,” and he was here uncomfortably conscious
that his opponent was in the right of the argument, as he started
through the throng to put his master into the “shell” of the
Shire-famous scarlet and white.
“Tip-top condition, my boy--tip-top, and no mistake,” murmured Mr.
Willon for the edification of those around them as the saddle-girths
were buckled on, and the Guards' Crack stood the cynosure of every eye
at Iffesheim.
Then, in his capacity as head attendant on the hero, he directed the
exercise bridle to be taken off, and with his own hands adjusted a new
and handsome one, slung across his arm.
“'Tis a'most a pity. 'Tis a'most a pity,” thought the worthy, as he put
the curb on the King; “but I shouldn't have been haggravated with that
hinsolent soldiering chap. There, my boy! if you'll win with a painted
quid, I'm a Dutchman.”
Forest King champed his bit between his teeth a little; it tasted
bitter; he tossed his head and licked it with his tongue impatiently;
the taste had got down his throat and he did not like its flavor; he
turned his deep, lustrous eyes with a gentle patience on the crowd about
him, as though asking them what was the matter with him. No one moved
his bit; the only person who could have had such authority was busily
giving the last polish to his coat with a fine handkerchief--that
glossy neck which had been so dusted many a time with the cobweb
coronet-broidered handkerchiefs of great ladies--and his instincts,
glorious as they were, were not wise enough to tell him to kick his head
groom down, then and there, with one mortal blow, as his poisoner and
betrayer.
The King chafed under the taste of that “painted quid”; he felt a
nausea as he swallowed, and he turned his handsome head with a strange,
pathetic astonishment in his glance. At that moment a familiar hand
stroked his mane, a familiar foot was put into his stirrup, Bertie threw
himself into saddle; the lightest weight that ever gentleman-rider rode,
despite his six-foot length of limb. The King, at the well-known touch,
the well-loved voice, pricked his delicate ears, quivered in all his
frame with eager excitation, snuffed the air restlessly through his
distended nostrils, and felt every vein under his satin skin thrill
and swell with pleasure; he was all impatience, all power, all longing,
vivid intensity of life. If only that nausea would go! He felt a
restless sickliness stealing on him that his young and gallant strength
had never known since he was foaled. But it was not in the King to yield
to a little; he flung his head up, champing angrily at the bit, then
walked down to the starting-post with his old calm, collected grace; and
Cecil, looking at the glossy bow of the neck, and feeling the width of
the magnificent ribs beneath him, stooped from his saddle a second as he
rode out of the inclosure and bent to the Seraph.
“Look at him, Rock! The thing's as good as won.”
The day was very warm and brilliant; all Baden had come down to the
race-course; continuous strings of carriages, with their four or six
horses and postilions, held the line far down over the plains; mob there
was none, save of women in matchless toilets, and men with the highest
names in the “Almanac de Gotha”; the sun shone cloudlessly on the broad,
green plateau of Iffesheim, on the white amphitheater of chalk hills,
and on the glittering, silken folds of the flags of England, France,
Prussia, and of the Grand Duchy itself, that floated from the summits of
the Grand Stand, Pavilion, and Jockey Club.
The ladies, descending from the carriages, swept up and down on the
green course that was so free from “cads” and “legs”; their magnificent
skirts trailing along without the risk of a grain of dust; their costly
laces side by side with the Austrian uniforms of the military men from
Rastadt. The betting was but slight, in odd contrast with the hubbub and
striking clamor of English betting rings; the only approach to anything
like “real business” being transacted between the members of the
Household and those of the Jockey Clubs. Iffesheim was pure pleasure,
like every other item of Baden existence, and all aristocratic,
sparkling, rich, amusement-seeking Europe seemed gathered there under
the sunny skies, and on everyone's lips in the titled throng was but one
name--Forest King's. Even the coquettish bouquet-sellers, who remembered
the dresses of his own colors which Cecil had given them last year when
he had won the Rastadt, would sell nothing except little twin scarlet
and white moss rosebuds; of which thousands were gathered and died that
morning in honor of the English Guards' champion.
A slender event usually, the presence of the renowned crack of the
Household Cavalry made the Prix de Dames the most eagerly watched-for
entry on the card; and the rest of the field were scarcely noticed as
the well-known gold-embroidered jacket came up at the starting-post.
The King saw that blaze of light and color over course and stands that
he knew so well by this time; he felt the pressure round him of his
foreign rivals as they reared and pulled and fretted and passaged; the
old longing quivered in all his eager limbs, the old fire wakened in all
his dauntless blood; like the charger at sound of the trumpet-call, he
lived in his past victories, and was athirst for more. But yet--between
him and the sunny morning there seemed a dim, hazy screen; on his
delicate ear the familiar clangor smote with something dulled and
strange; there seemed a numbness stealing down his frame; he shook his
head in an unusual and irritated impatience; he did not know what ailed
him. The hand he loved so loyally told him the work that was wanted of
him; but he felt its guidance dully too, and the dry, hard, hot earth,
as he struck it with his hoof, seemed to sway and heave beneath him; the
opiate had stolen into his veins and was creeping stealthily and surely
to the sagacious brain, and over the clear, bright senses.
The signal for the start was given; the first mad headlong rush broke
away with the force of a pent-up torrent suddenly loosened; every
instinct of race and custom, and of that obedience which rendered him
flexible as silk to his rider's will, sent him forward with that stride
which made the Guards' Crack a household word in all the Shires. For a
moment he shook himself clear of all the horses, and led off in the old
grand sweeping canter before the French bay, three lengths in the one
single effort.
Then into his eyes a terrible look of anguish came; the numb and sickly
nausea was upon him, his legs trembled, before his sight was a blurred,
whirling mist; all the strength and force and mighty life within him
felt ebbing out, yet he struggled bravely. He strained, he panted, he
heard the thundering thud of the first flight gaining nearer and nearer
upon him; he felt his rivals closing hotter and harder in on him; he
felt the steam of his opponent's smoking, foam-dashed withers burn
on his own flanks and shoulders; he felt the maddening pressure of a
neck-to-neck struggle; he felt what in all his victorious life he had
never known--the paralysis of defeat.
The glittering throngs spreading over the plains gazed at him in the
sheer stupor of amazement; they saw that the famous English hero was
dead-beat as any used-up knacker.
One second more he strove to wrench himself through the throng of the
horses, through the headlong crushing press, through--worst foe of
all!--the misty darkness curtaining his sight! One second more he
tried to wrestle back the old life into his limbs, the unworn power
and freshness into nerve and sinew. Then the darkness fell utterly; the
mighty heart failed; he could do no more--and his rider's hand slackened
and turned him gently backward; his rider's voice sounded very low and
quiet to those who, seeing that every effort was hopeless, surged and
clustered round his saddle.
“Something ails the King,” said Cecil calmly; “he is fairly knocked
off his legs. Some Vet must look to him; ridden a yard farther he will
fall.”
Words so gently spoken!--yet in the single minute that alone had passed
since they had left the Starter's Chair, a lifetime seemed to have been
centered, alike to Forest King and to his owner.
The field swept on with a rush, without the favorite; and the Prix de
Dames was won by the French bay L'Etoile.