When Elizabeth, instead of running away from her rivals, passed the winning-post a bad fifth, even his iron nerve failed him for once. He uttered no word; but he grew pale as death, and staggered as if about to fall. A moment later, however, he had pulled himself together and was helping Lady Aylesbury to count her small losses. "Tell me how I stand," asked her ladyship, as she placed her betting-book in his hand. The Marquess made the necessary calculation; and with a smile of sympathy, answered: "You have lost £23." And he, who could thus calmly calculate so trifling a loss, was £50,000 poorer by his filly's failure to win the Plate!
He knew well that he was a ruined man—worse than this, unutterably galling to his proud spirit—he knew that he was a disgraced man. His vast fortune had crumbled away until he had not £50,000 in the world to pay this last debt of honour. And yet he continued to smile in the face of ruin, carrying through this crowning disaster the brave heart of an English gentleman and a sportsman.
He sold the last of his remaining acres, his hunters and hounds, and all his personal belongings; and all the money he could raise from the wreckage of his fortune was a pitiful £10,000. His last sovereign was gone, and he was £40,000 in debt, without a hope of paying it. When he next appeared on a race-course the very men who had cheered him to the echo at Ascot greeted him with jeers and angry shouts at Epsom. The hero of the Turf, the idol of the Ring, was that blackest of black sheep, a defaulter!
And not only was he thus branded as a defaulter. Strange stories were being circulated to his further discredit as a sportsman. The running of Lady Elizabeth in one race was, it was said, more than open to suspicion. The Earl, who was considered a certainty for the Derby, was unaccountably scratched on the very evening before the race, though the Marquess stood to win £35,000 by her, and did not hedge the stake-money.
The public indignation at these discreditable incidents found a vent in the columns of the Times; and although Lord Hastings denied that there was "one single circumstance mentioned as regards the two horses, correctly stated," and offered a frank explanation in both cases, the public refused to be appeased, and the stigma remained.
So overwhelmed was he by this combination of assaults on his fortune and his good name that his health—undermined no doubt by excesses—broke down. He spent the summer months of 1868 in his yacht, cruising among the northern seas in search of health; but no sea-breezes could bring back colour to his cheeks or hope to his heart. He was a broken man before he had reached his prime, and he realised that his sun was near its setting. When he returned to England no one who saw him could doubt that the end was at hand. But his ruling passion remained strong to the last. He was advised by his friends to stay away from the Doncaster races; but he would go, though he could only with difficulty hobble on crutches.
The last pathetic glimpse the world caught of this former idol of the Turf was as, from a basket-carriage, with pale, haggard face and straining eyes, he watched Athena, a beautiful mare which had once been his, win a race. As she was being led to the weighing-house he struggled from his carriage, hobbled on his crutches up to the beautiful animal, and lovingly patted her glossy neck.
Such was the last appearance of the ill-fated Marquess on a scene of his former triumphs. For a few months longer he made a gallant fight for life. He even contemplated another voyage, and a winter in Egypt; but, almost before winter had set in, on the 11th November 1868, he gave up the struggle and drew his last breath—"leaving neither heir to his honours nor the smallest vestige of his ruined fortune; but leaving, in spite of his final failure, the memory of a true sportsman, and of a perfect gentleman who was no man's enemy but his own."
Before the Marquess of Hastings had mounted his first pony another meteor of the Turf, equally dazzling, had flashed across the sky, and been merged in a darkness even more tragic than his own.