“To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
And witch the world with noble horsemanship!-Shakespeare.
The onlookers behaved in the orthodox
runaway-horse manner.
Women screamed, or took the opportunity
to manipulate a surreptitious powder-puff.
Men shouted and waved their topees,
or shouted and performed equestrian gymnastics, and
the jockeys en masse cursed their masters’
presence, and the more or less mythical value of their
respective mounts.
Just for that one moment in which
anything occurring out of your ordinary rut leaves
you practically stunned into inertia.
Then things began to shape themselves,
and for one unbelievable second caste was thrown to
the soft wind which was sweeping up the last rags
of mist.
Military mingled with commerce, the
I.C.S. which, written in full, means God’s Anointed,
looked at instead of through the railway;
jute condescended to the tourist, and white ejaculated
to kaffyolay as they all sat gazing after the retreating
form of the Devil and the pursuing shapes of one or
two, who, fairly decently mounted, were pegging away
stout-heartedly in a perfectly vain, but praiseworthy
effort to save Leonie from certain death.
And then a sigh of relief went up.
A bay, stretched out, was flying like
the wind, hoofs thundering on the hard ground, tail
streaming, as, urged by his master’s heel and
voice, he strove to get to the tank before the runaway.
The distance and the speed were too
great, the horse and kit were not sufficiently familiar
to allow the spectators to identify the one man who
seemed to have a plan in his head, and a horse under
him.
The women strained their eyes in an
endeavour to distinguish him, men kept theirs glued
to Leonie who was riding straight and apparently making
no effort to check the Devil, and policemen, forgetful
of their dignity, their status, and their red turbans,
hung over the rails near the grand-stand entrance
with a riff-raff of taxi chauffeurs, pukka chauffeurs
and syce.
For the first two hundred yards across
the brown grass of the Maidan, Leonie thoroughly enjoyed
the tearing gallop, having failed to grasp the fact
that the Devil was bolting; but after having spoken
soothingly, and pulled firmly without making any impression,
somewhere about the middle of the polo ground she
awoke to the fact that something had to be done.
“They’re in it! No! missed, by Jove!”
The jockey bunched himself in an ecstasy
of relief, and his mare danced with a fellow-electrical
feeling as the Devil, wheeling sharply from the sparkling
water in the tank, missed the lone tree by a foot;
then gathering fresh impetus from the ever-nearing
sound of thudding hoofs, tore towards the rails enclosing
the two tracks.
They are not high, but they are fairly
close together, and four in all, and a horse, blind
from fear or temper, is quite as likely to let you
down at the first as at the fourth.
But Jan Cuxson saw a gleam of hope.
Surely the runaway would slacken,
surely no horse could possibly take four fences at
that terrific speed; and if he did slacken, then the
bay, as nimble as a cat in spite of his weight, would
catch up, and something would be done before they
dashed headlong across the tram-threaded, crowded
Kidderpore Road.
Except for admiring her seat and seeming
calm acceptance of her inevitable and horrible end,
he had not bothered about the girl as a human being;
but he frowned suddenly in a vague effort of recollection
when she stretched out her hand in a beckoning gesture
for help to the man she heard racing to her rescue.
“By Jove!” he cried, and
“By Jove!” repeated the others behind,
and “By Jove!” echoed the distant
on-lookers as, without hesitation or click of hoof
on wood, the Devil rose to the first, the second, the
third and the fourth rail, skimming them like a bird,
while the bay, just two rails behind, crashed over
them with nothing to spare.
Inky words take a long time to write,
but Leonie’s perilous career towards the river
was merely the matter of a few cyclonic minutes, leaving
the drivers of bullock and water-buffalo carts, gharries
and trams no time in which to make an opening for
her tempestuous passage.
“Wah! Wah!” shouted
a group of natives, draped in gaily coloured shawls,
who watched admiringly the woman’s perfect seat,
caring not an anna that she might be thrown
and break her neck or be crushed to death. In
fact, the halo of death encircling the woman’s
head lent enchantment to the sport, causing some of
the more wealthy to bet upon her end.
A woman, white or brown, more or less
in India of what account? though it were a different
matter in the case of the sahib who rode in pursuit,
with a mouth like a steel trap and eyes of fire.
Two women, with babes astraddle on
the hip, turned to watch Leonie, then stuffing more
betel nut into their already crimson mouths, moved
lightly through the dust towards the bazaar.
Crouched at the foot of a tree, inhaling the smoke
from the bowl of his rude native pipe, an old man
under the benign influence of the drug, lost in dreams,
took no notice whatever of the disturbance around
him.
But the drivers, with raucous cries,
twisted the tails of their kine to port or starboard,
or beat them forcibly, and the tram driver, roused
from the lethargy engendered by the cool of the early
morning, by the shouts and cries, put on his brake,
bringing his tram to a stand-still just as, with a
terrific clatter of hoofs, Leonie dashed past the front
of it with Cuxson at her heels.
There was a moment’s uproar
when, wishing for a better view, the driver of a tawdry
ekka urged his half-starved pony forward.
The bay caught the side of the pony’s
bleeding mouth, causing the wretched animal to rear
from pain and twist sideways into a bullock cart.
In its usual leisurely way the bullock
swung itself also sideways, and almost under the bay’s
feet, causing him to lose a precious second, for which
Cuxson made up by a ruthless use of his spurs, whilst
before Leonie’s eyes, quite close, through the
trees, appeared the funnels and masts of the river
craft.
“Oh!” she said involuntarily,
having retained no impression during her motor drives
of the road to Kidderpore; as the Devil tore with her
across the old polo ground and the old Ellenborough
course, straight to the crowded Strand Road.
And then she sighed a little sigh
of relief, for the bay heaved alongside and a hand
stretched for her bridle.
Side by side they clattered across
the Strand towards the Prinseps Ghat, standing just
as ostracised and white as the Marble Arch.
Would the two horses crash headlong
into the columns, or would the Devil yield in time
to the strong hand pulling on the bit?
Neither.
Terrified by the shouts of the populace,
and the shrill whistling from the river, he raced
along so close to the left side of the monument that
Cuxson’s boot scratched against the stone.
But as they crashed across the Strand
and the sharp incline on the other side of the railway
lines appeared, Cuxson, knowing that the moment had
arrived, dropped his reins, and gripping the bay with
his knees, leant over towards Leonie as she dropped
her reins, and loosening her grip on the pommel, prepared
to break her neck or her back or both as she slipped
from the saddle.
Then she felt an arm round her waist.
She knew intuitively her rescuer’s intention,
but !
Would a man’s left arm be strong
enough to lift her across her horse’s hind-quarters
at the terrific speed they were going, combined with
her weight?
Would he be able to hold her until
his horse slackened speed, or would they both overbalance
and hurtle to the ground together? Would there
be time to stop the horse, or would they all be hurled
into the water?
The questions had hardly flashed through
her mind when she felt herself lifted and swung.
For one petrifying moment the bay,
pulled savagely until blood stained the bit, reared
with its double weight within a yard of the steep
incline, then, yanked cruelly by its master, swung
sideways and came down; just as the Devil, striving
at the last moment to check his wild career, hesitated
for one half-second, then, pushed by his own terrific
impetus, slid over the incline, and turning a complete
somersault backwards, crashed into the water.
Leonie’s scarlet mouth trembled,
and her yellow-green eyes gleamed as the man she loved
pressed both her hands in his against his coat, until
the high relief of the button was marked upon her skin,
even through her glove.
“You,” she said, so softly
that the one note sounded like the chime of a temple
bell.
“You!” he said, giving
her arms a little savage wrench, then letting her
go as the sound of approaching hoofs heralded the arrival
of the first of the hunt to be in at the averted death.
A score or more of natives in their
vivid colours, which seem so atune with all that has
to do with love, mattered not at all; but Leonie turned
and pointed casually to the Devil, enjoying his matutinal
bath, as the boy flung himself from the discredited
polo pony on which he had done his best.
He seized both her hands and held
them very tightly, then catching sight of Cuxson,
let them go suddenly.
“Of course!” he said,
“of course you would-you lucky beggar!”
Then added triumphantly, “But anyway, I
told her so!”