‘Miss Christabel, I have come to ask you to give me one of your ribbons for luck. I see Miss Effingham has decorated Hamilton. It’s only fair that I should have a charm too.’
‘Here it is, if you care for it, Bob!’ said the girl, hastily detaching a ‘cerise’ knot from her dress, while her varying colour told how the slight incident touched an unseen chord beneath the surface; ‘only I wish you were not going to ride at all. Somebody will be killed at these horrid steeplechases yet, I know.’
‘Why, you’re nearly as bad as my sister,’ said the youthful knight reassuringly, and giving his fair monitress an unnecessary look of gratitude, as Wilfred thought. ‘I shan’t let her come on the course next time I ride. There’s the saddling bell. We’ll see whether the pink ribbon or the blue goes farthest.’
The arrangements had been made with foresight, so that beyond the customary galloping across the course for a surcingle at the last moment by a friend in the interests of Currency Lass, a proceeding which aroused Mr. Rockley’s wrath, who publicly threatened her rider that he would bring the matter before the Turf Club, little delay was caused. At length all preliminaries were complete, and high-born St. Andrew passed the stand, shining like a star, with Charles Hamilton, in blue and gold, utterly point devise, on his back. Horse and rider seemed so harmonious, indeed, that a ringing cheer burst from the crowd, and all the throats whose owners inhabited the hills and vales south of the Great Lake shouted themselves hoarse for St. Andrew and Mr. Hamilton.
‘He’s as fit as hands can make him,’ said one of this division—a groom of O’Desmond’s. ‘There’s few of us can put on the real French polish like Mr. Hamilton; he’s a tiger to work, surely; and the little ’oss is fast. I know his time. If that Syd, or whatever they call him, licks ’im to-day, he’ll have his work to do. My guinea’s on St. Andrew.’
‘He’s a good ’un, and a stayer,’ said the man who stood next to him in the closely-packed temporary stand; ‘but there’s a bit of chance work in a steeplechase. The Cid’s a trimmer on the flat, or cross the sticks, but you can’t depend on him. I wouldn’t back him for a shillin’ if young Clarke wasn’t on him. But he’s that game and strong in the saddle, and lucky, as my note would be on a mule if he was up. Here he comes!’
As he spoke, The Cid came by the post at speed, ‘a pipe-opener’ having been thought necessary by his master, and as the grand horse extended himself, showing the elastic freedom of his magnificent proportions, with the perfection of his rider’s seat and figure, standing jockey-like in his saddle, moveless, and with hands down, it was a marvel of equestrian harmony.
The roar of applause with which the crowd greeted the exhibition showed a balance of popularity in favour of horse and rider as the long-repeated cheers swelled and recommenced, not ending indeed until the pair came walking back, The Cid raising his lofty crest, and swinging his head from side to side, as he paced forward with the air of a conqueror.
‘Oh, what lovely, lovely creatures!’ said Annabel Effingham, who had never been to a race meeting before. ‘I had no idea a horse could be so beautiful as St. Andrew or The Cid. Why can’t they both win? I hope Mr. Hamilton will, I’m sure, because he’s our neighbour; but I shall be grieved if The Cid loses. How becoming jockey costume is! And what a lovely jacket that is of Mr. Clarke’s! If I were a man I should be passionately fond of racing.’
‘Bob’s a great deal too fond of it,’ said Mrs. Malahyde, a bright-eyed matron of seven- or eight-and-twenty. ‘I wish you girls would combine and make him promise to give it up. I can’t keep away when he’s going to ride, but it’s all agony with me till I see him come in safe.’