‘Have a care there! Do mind his heels!’ exclaimed the reedy voice of an attenuated being in drab gaiters and striped waistcoat, one of the three body-servants in attendance on the magnificent Smasher, as that superb animal began to lash out furiously amongst the mob.
‘Grand horse that!’ said Captain Prodgers, as with impartial admiration he surveyed the formidable favourite. ‘See! what muscles those are that swell beneath a skin as bright and supple as a lady’s satin! Does “My Lord” credit.’
‘My Lord,’ a vacuous young gentleman in a suit of black and white checks and a soft hat, stood a little way off, sucking the gold head of a short whipstock, and contemplating society in general, through his eyeglass, with a serene stare. Nobody could ever be quite certain whether this aristocratic patron of the turf was unfathomably deep or absurdly shallow. His Lordship was a man of few words, and never committed himself in public to an opinion wise or foolish.
That ‘My Lord’s’ stud had a knack of winning was notorious. But then the laurels, such as they were, may have been due to the florid, well-shaven, middle-aged trainer, with a flower in his buttonhole, who stood at his Lordship’s elbow.
The Smasher was a splendid black horse, over sixteen hands high, and very powerful. His glossy coat shone like a looking-glass; but that his temper was none of the best was evident, not only by the frequent scattering of the crowd, to avoid his iron-shod heels, but by the sidelong glance of his wicked eye and the irritable lashing of his silken tail.
‘Shews the whites of them eyes of his, he do, this morning,’ remarked one appreciative groom.
‘Bless ye! the captain won’t care,’ was the phlegmatic reply.
‘Rather the captain had the riding of him then nor me,’ returned the other.
The captain in question was not Jasper Denzil. It was Captain Hanger, pale and unimpassioned as ever, who now pressed up to speak for a moment with the owner and trainer of the horse he was to ride. As he stood, tapping his bright boots with his heavy whip, his gaudy silk jacket peeping from beneath the loose overcoat, he was the object of an inquisitive admiration that might well have been spent upon a worthier object. In certain circles, now, your gentleman steeplechase rider receives an amount of adulation singularly disproportioned to his utility to the commonweal. Of the well-known Captain Hanger, once in the army, then beggared, and now living by the deliberate risk of neck and bones, it was popularly believed that he would die in the exercise of his profession.