Under Two Flags | Page 5

the
dressing-chamber beyond was the Hon. Bertie himself, second son of
Viscount Royallieu, known generally in the Brigades as "Beauty." The
appellative, gained at Eton, was in no way undeserved; when the smoke
cleared away that was circling round him out of a great meerschaum
bowl, it showed a face of as much delicacy and brilliancy as a woman's;
handsome, thoroughbred, languid, nonchalant, with a certain latent
recklessness under the impressive calm of habit, and a singular softness
given to the large, dark hazel eyes by the unusual length of the lashes
over them. His features were exceedingly fair--fair as the fairest girl's;
his hair was of the softest, silkiest, brightest chestnut; his mouth very
beautifully shaped; on the whole, with a certain gentle, mournful
love-me look that his eyes had with them, it was no wonder that great
ladies and gay lionnes alike gave him the palm as the handsomest man
in all the Household Regiments--not even excepting that splendid
golden-haired Colossus, his oldest friend and closest comrade, known
as "the Seraph."
He looked at the new tops that Rake swung in his hand, and shook his
head.
"Better, Rake; but not right yet. Can't you get that tawny color in the
tiger's skin there? You go so much to brown."
Rake shook his head in turn, as he set down the incorrigible tops beside
six pairs of their fellows, and six times six of every other sort of boots
that the covert side, the heather, the flat, or the sweet shady side of
"Pall Mall" ever knew.
"Do my best, sir; but Polish don't come nigh Nature, Mr. Cecil."

"Goes beyond it, the ladies say; and to do them justice they favor it
much the most," laughed Cecil to himself, floating fresh clouds of
Turkish about him. "Willon up?"
"Yes, sir. Come in this minute for orders."
"How'd Forest King stand the train?"
"Bright as a bird, sir; he never mind nothing. Mother o' Pearl she
worreted a little, he says; she always do, along of the engine noise, but
the King walked in and out just as if the station were his own
stable-yard."
"He gave them gruel and chilled water after the shaking before he let
them go to their corn?"
"He says he did, sir."
Rake would by no means take upon himself to warrant the veracity of
his sworn foe, the stud-groom; unremitting feud was between them;
Rake considered that he knew more about horses than any other man
living, and the other functionary proportionately resented back his
knowledge and his interference, as utterly out of place in a
body-servant.
"Tell him I'll look in at the stable after duty and see the screws are all
right; and that he's to be ready to go down with them by my train
to-morrow--noon, you know. Send that note there, and the bracelets, to
St. John's Wood: and that white bouquet to Mrs. Delamaine. Bid
Willon get some Banbury bits; I prefer the revolving mouths, and some
of Wood's double mouths and Nelson gags; we want new ones. Mind
that lever-snap breech-loader comes home in time. Look in at the
Commission stables, and if you see a likely black charger as good as
Black Douglas, tell me. Write about the stud fox-terrier, and buy the
blue Dandy Dinmont; Lady Guinevere wants him. I'll take him down
with me. but first put me into harness, Rake; it's getting late."
Murmuring which multiplicity of directions, for Rake to catch as he
could, in the softest and sleepiest of tones, Bertie Cecil drank a glass of
Curacoa, put his tall, lithe limbs indolently off his sofa, and surrendered
himself to the martyrdom of cuirass and gorget, standing six feet one
without his spurred jacks, but light-built and full of grace as a deer, or
his weight would not have been what it was in gentleman-rider races
from the Hunt steeple-chase at La Marche to the Grand National in the
Shires.

"As if Parliament couldn't meet without dragging us through the dust!
The idiots write about 'the swells in the Guards,' as if we had all fun
and no work, and knew nothing of the rough of the Service. I should
like to learn what they call sitting motionless in your saddle through
half a day, while a London mob goes mad round you, and lost dogs
snap at your charger's nose, and dirty little beggars squeeze against
your legs, and the sun broils you, or the fog soaks you, and you sit
sentinel over a gingerbread coach till you're deaf with the noise, and
blind with the dust, and sick with the crowd, and half dead for want of
sodas and brandies, and from going a whole morning without one
cigarette! Not to mention the inevitable apple-woman who invariably
entangles herself