Page:The Smart Set (Volume 52, Number 4).djvu/14

walked toward the playing field where the game was beginning.

It was that afternoon of early June when the hopes of the men who wore the red rose were dashed to the ground by the accident to their famous number two.

When a backhand blow by the hard-hitting son of the ground’s owner struck the cavalryman full in the face and knocked him from his mount there was consternation among such of the spectators who guessed the possible consequence of the accident.

“What a dreadful, dreadful pity,” said a musical voice that brought a thrill to Blackwelll “He was playing at the top of his form and he's such a delightful man. too, isn't he?”

The ex-internationalist to whom she spoke smiled. “I haven't your opportunity for finding out how delightful he can be, but he's the best number two they ever sent out from Hurlingham. It's a damned shame. Minster'll have to play, I suppose.”

The two were standing within a few feet from Horace and utterly unconscious of his presence. Once the man glanced at him and the owner of Marshfield felt the look an unkind one. It seemed that the famous player had sensed him as one out of his element. It was a quick sudden scrutiny that ended in a half frown.

As a matter of fact, Colman hardly noticed his face. He was looking at this tall good-looking man who wore the colors of the Tenth Hussars, and wondering who he was. New York tailors had just taken to importing regimental and college colors in the form of neckties, and Horace had been attracted by a combination which informed the initiated that its owner belonged, or should belong if etiquette were observed, to that very famous regiment of King's Hussars.

As it was, Horace misconstrued the look and conceived a sudden dislike to the great horseman and an overpowering jealousy that it should be his luck to escort Mrs. Hamilton Buxton.

The niceties of the play, when it was resumed with a new man in place of the injured one, had little attraction for the lately come to New York. He could only stare at this brilliant and magnetic woman whose matrimonial adventures had come even to the attention of his aunt and merited her severe censure. She looked at him once, a cold hard scrutiny, it seemed, which seemed to confirm Colman’s verdict of his social impossibility. In a sense, they looked through him and not at him. He wondered if his tailor had proved false when he declared his new customer's suits embodied the last refinements of the art sartorial. Some of the men watching the game were in riding kit; others had obviously motored up. None had clothes on so extremely new as his own. Wolfston Colman was almost carelessly dressed.

As he gazed at the man he envied he caught sight of Effie regarding him with a supercilious smile. He knew she was by way of being clever and it infuriated him to find her watching his entrance into smart society with frank and ungenerous curiosity. He turned away as he caught her glance and looked out into the field, now free of ponies, since it was one of the intervals between “chukkers.”

Not many yards distant he saw the tall blond man she had told him was Lord Minster talking to a pretty woman in white and a slight dark man who looked like a Spaniard. Horace had seen her in the pavilion at the other side of the ground when he entered, and she had crossed the field for the first time. He could hear that they were discussing the lamentable accident to the Hurlingham star.

Horace felt suddenly very remote from the world wherein he wished to move. All the men and women about him seemed to have friends everywhere. They chattered and discussed one another and the finer points of the game as though life were for them—as indeed it was for the majority—a round