The next day’s more exciting programme included the steeplechase, to be run after lunch. In this truly memorable event some of the best cross-country horses in Australia were to meet, including those sensational cracks, The Cid and St. Andrew, each representing rival stables, rival colonies. The former with Bob Clarke up, the latter with Charles Hamilton; each the show horseman of his district, and backed by his party to the verge of indiscretion.
The less heroic melodramas having been acted out with more or less contentment to performers, there was a general return to boot and saddle, previous to the leisurely progress homeward from the day’s festivities. This, as the hours were passing on towards the shadowy twilight, was not one of the least pleasant incidents of the day’s adventures.
The road skirted the great plain which bounded the racecourse, and as the westering sun flamed gorgeous to his pyre, fancy insensibly glided from the realism of the present to the desert mysteries of the past.
‘Oh, what a sunset!’ said Christabel Rockley, whom fate and the impatience of her horse had placed under the control of Mr. Argyll. ‘How grand it is! I never see sunset over the plains from our verandah without thinking of the desert and the Israelites, camels, and pillared palaces. Is it like that? How I should love to travel!’
‘The desert is not so unlike that plain, or any plain in Australia,’ explained Argyll (who had seen the Arab’s camel kneel, and watched the endless line of the Great Caravan wind slowly over the wind-blown hollows), ‘inasmuch as it is large and level; but the vast, awe-striking ruins, such as Luxor or Palmyra—records of a vanished race—these we can only dream of.’
‘Oh, how wonderful, how entrancing it must be,’ said Miss Christabel, ‘to see such enchanted palaces! Fancy us standing on a fallen column, in a city of the dead, with those dear picturesque Arabs. Oh, wouldn’t it be heavenly! And you must be there to explain it all to me, you know!’
As the girl spoke, with heightened colour, and the eager, half-girlish tones, so full of melody in the days of early womanhood, as the great dark eyes emitted a wondrous gleam, raised pleadingly to her companion’s face, even the fastidious Argyll held brief question whether life would not be endurable in the grand solitudes of the world, ‘with one (such) fair spirit to be his minister.’
‘My dear Miss Christabel,’ he made answer, ‘I should be charmed to be your guide on such an expedition. But if you will permit me to recommend you a delightful book, called——’
Here he was interrupted by the deeply-interested fair one, who, pointing with her whip to the advanced guard of the party, now halted and drawn to the side of the road, said hurriedly, ‘Whatever are they going to do, Mr. Argyll? Oh, I see—Bob Clarke’s going to jump King of the Valley over Dean’s fence. It’s ever so high, and the King is such a wretch to pull. I hope he won’t get a fall.’
This seemingly abrupt transition from the land of romance to that of reality was not perhaps so wide a departure in the spirit as in the letter. The age of chivalry is not past; but the knights who wear khaki suits in place of armour, and bear the breech-loader in preference to the battle-axe, have to resort to means of proving their prowess before their ladies’ eyes other than by splintering of lances and hacking at each other in the sword-play of the tournament.