THE PAINTED BIT. A STORY OF HORSE RACE.

Evening Post, Volume XLIV, Issue 74, 24 September 1892, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE PAINTED BIT. A STORY OF HOR SE RACE.

That evening in the loose box •down at Boyallieu, Forest King stood ■without any body clothing, for the night was close and sultry ; a lock c^ the 6weeteat hay unnoticed in n : 8 rack, and his favourite wheatr^ g^ei uncared for under his very noBQ . tho King was in tho height, of exc it a tion, alarm, and haugb^ wrath- His ears were laid flr, t to hie head) hie nostrils were distended, his eyes wore glanc^ g uneasily with a nervous, o^igry fire rarely in him, and ever fend anon he lashed out his xieels with a tremendous thundering thud against the opposite wall, with a force that reverberated through the stables and made his companions start and edge away. It was precisely these companions that the l aristocratic hero of the Soldiers' Blue Bibbon scornfully abhorred. They had just been looking him over — to their imminont peril; and the Patrican winner of the Vase, the brilliant six-year-old of Paris, and Shire and Spa stoeplechase fame, tho knightly descendant of the White Cockade blood, and of the coursers of Circassia, had resented the familiarity proportionately to his own renown and dignity. The King was a sweet-tempered horse, a perfect tempor. indeed, and ductile to a touch from those he loved ; but he liked very few, and would Buffer liberties from none. And of a truth his prejudices were very just ; and if his clever heels had caught — as it •was not Mb fault that they did not — the heads of his two companions instead of coming with that pon<^ 6 ' rous crash into the panels of his v f iox Bociety would have certainly * oeen no " loser, and his owner w'jy]^ h ave gained more than had ever before hung in the careless 'oai anco o f n i 8 life. But the iron nee i 8; with their Hhimng plates, only cau ht the oak of the next bJX door . ftnd t he tete-a-tete in the sultry oppressive night went on the apeak^ moV ed to a prude^ distance, one of them ,'-*gntfuUy chewing apiece of straw, a uter the immemorial habit of grooms, "who ever seem as if they had been born into this world with a cornetalk ready in their mouths. " It's a'most a pity — he's in Buch perfect condition. Tiptop. Cool as a cucumber after the longest pipeopener ; licks his oats up to the last grain ; leads the whole string such a rattling spin as never was spun but by a Derby cracker before him. It's a'most a pity," said Wilson, meditatively eyeing his charge, the King, with remorseful glances. " Prut — tvsh — tish !" said his companion, with a whistle in his teeth.. *' It'll only knock him over for ch e xace ; he'll be right aB a trivet^ after it. What's your little game^ toming it soft like that all of d sudden? You hate that ere yov. fl g fellow like piaon." " Ay," assented the head groom, ■with a tigerip^ energy, viciously consuming hi A bit of straw. "What for am I— -head groom come nigh twenty ye^ ra a g 0 ; an dto Markisses and Wifjcounts afore him— put aside in tlr^t tere wav f or a f e ll ow a 8 he's too x into his service out of the dregs of » regiment. . . ." " Come, then ; no gammon," growled his companion — the " cousin out of Yorkshire " of the keeper's tree. " What's yer figure, you say ?" relented Wilson, meditatively. "Two thousand to nothin' — come! — can't say no handsomer," retorted the Yorkshire cousin, with the air of a man conscious of behaving very jxobly. " For the race in Germany ?" purBued Mr. Wilson, still meditatively. " Two thousand to nothin' — come!" reiterated the other, with his arms iolded to imitate that this and nothing else was the figure to which he would bind himself. Wilsot chewed another bit of Btraw, gltnced at the horse aB though he were a human thing, to hear, to witness, aid to judge, grew a little pale, and itood forward. "Hush' somebody'U spy on us. It's a bargain." "Done. And you'll paint him, eh?" "Yes— Til— paint him." The asamt was very husky, and dragged sl»wly out, while his eyes glanced wiih a furtive frightened glance over the loose box. Then — Btill with thit cringing, terrific look backward to the horse, as an assassin tnay steal a glance before his deed at his uncorcious victim — the head groom and his comrade went out and closed the door of the loose box, and passed into the hot lowering summer night. Forest King, left in solitude, shook himself with a neigh ; took a refreshing roll in the straw, and turned with an appetite to his neglected gruel. Unhappily for himself, his fine instincts could not teach him the conspiracy that lay in wait for him and his ; and the gallant beast, content to be alone, soon slept the Bleep of the righteous. Baden was full. The supreme empires of de monde sent their sovereigns, diamond - crowned and resistless, to outshine all other principalities and powers, while in breadth of marvellous skirts, in costliness of cobweb laces, in unapproachability of Indian shawls, and gold embroideries, and mad fantasies, and Cleopatra extravagancies, and jewels fit for a Maharajah, the Zu-Zu was distanced by all. 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 steeplechaser, Forest King — certes, there was not one half bo 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 Btables, especially a killing little bay, 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 Btand against the King, and that "wonderful stride of his which spreadeagled his field like magic, and his countrymen were well content to leave their honour 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 of it, or to be very heavily hit. There could be no medium. " Tip-top condition, my boy — and no mistdke," murmured Mr. Wilson, for the edification of those around himi as the saddle-girthswere 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 shoulder. " 'Tis a'most a pity," thought the .•worthy, as he put the curb on the King, " but I ehouldn't have been

hnpgravatod with U>at hineolenf- bold enng uhap. There, my boy, if you win with a painted quid I'm a Dutchmac." forest King champed his bit between, his teeth a little; it tasted ".itter. He tossed his head and licked it with his tongue impatiently; the taste had gono down his throat, and ho did riot like its flavour. 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 Buch authority ' was busily giving the last polish to his coat with a nno handkerchief — that glossy nock which had been so dusted many a time with the cobweb coronet-bordered handkerchiefs of great ladies — and his instincts, glorious as they were, were irot 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 the " 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, and Cecil threw himself into the saddle, the lightest weight that ever gentleman rider rode, despite his six-foot length of limb. The King, at the well-known touch, the woll-10/yed voice, pricked his delica^ • earß quivered in all his fram; d oa ' expectation, snuffed. CQe a i r restlessly through his d^ CGn a e d nostrils, and felt every v rfin uadet nis Batin skin thrill a^ Bwe n w i tQ pi eaßUre , h e was A n impatience, all power> all l0 'iiging, all vivid intensity to! life. Jft only that nausea would go ! He felt a restless uwkliness creeping 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 5 ha flung his head up, champing angrily at the tit, then walked down to the starting poßt with his old calm collected grace, and Cecil, looking at the glossy bow of the neck, and feeling the width of the magnificent ribs underneath him, stooped frum his saddle a second as he rode out of the enclosure and bsnfc to tho Seraph. "Look at him, Eock ! The thing's as good as won." The day was very warm and brilliant ; all Baden had come down to the racecourse ; continuous strings of carriages, with their four or six horses and postillions, held the line far north 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 air phi theatre 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 Grandstand, 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 Bide with the Austrian uniforms of the military men from Raßtadt. The betting was but slight; the Paris " Combien contre L'Etoile ?" " Six cents francs sur le chevel Anglais ?" echoing everywhere, in odd contrast to the hubbub and striking clamour of Englishbetting 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 Balder existence, and all aristocratic, sparkling, rich, amusement-seeking Europe seemed gathered there under the sunny skies, aud on everyone's lip there was but one name — Forest King. Even the coquettish bouquetseller, who remembered the dresses of his own colours which Cecil had given the last year when he had won the Eastadt, would sell nothing except little twin scarlet and white moss rose buds, of which thousands were gathered and died that morning in honour 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 goldbroidered jacket came up at the starting post. The King saw that blaze of light and colour over course and stands that he knew so well by the 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 his eager limbs, the old fire wakened in his dauntless blood: like the charger at the 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 clangour smote with something dulled and strange ; there seemed a numbness stealing down his frame ; he ( fihook 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 the Shires. For a moment he shook himself clear of all his horses, and led off in a grand sweeping canter before the French bay — thiee lengths in 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 mass; 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 to him, he felt his rivals closing hotter and hotter in on him ; he felt the steam of his opponents' 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 a a 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 his horses, through the headlong crushing press, through — worst foe of all — the misty dark curtailing bis Bight. One instant more he tried to

■wrestle hack the old life into Iriflimbs, unworn power and freshness into bone and simewi Then the darkness falln utteily — the mighty heart failed. He could do no more ; and hiß rider's hand slackened and turned him gently backward. His rider's voice souiided very low and quiet to those who, seeing that every effort was hopeless, surged and clustered round his Saddle. " Something ails the King, 1 * said Cecil calmly. "He ?b fairly knocked off his lega. Some one must look to him. Bidden 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 choir, a lifetime seemed to have been centred alike to Forest King and to his owner. The field swept on without a rush without the favourite ; and the Prix de Dames was won by the French Bay, L'Etoile.