Under Two Flags | Page 6

between your horse's legs, and the certainty of your
riding down somebody and having a summons about it the next day! If
all that isn't the rough of the Service, I should like to know what is.
Why the hottest day in the batteries, or the sharpest rush into
Ghoorkhas or Bhoteahs, would be light work, compared!" murmured
Cecil with the most plaintive pity for the hardships of life in the
Household, while Rake, with the rapid proficiency of long habit, braced,
and buckled and buttoned, knotted the sash with the knack of
professional genius, girt on the brightest of all glittering polished silver
steel "Cut-and-Thrusts," with its rich gild mountings, and contemplated
with flattering self-complacency leathers white as snow, jacks brilliant
as black varnish could make them, and silver spurs of glittering
radiance, until his master stood full harnessed, at length, as gallant a
Life Guardsman as ever did duty at the Palace by making love to the
handsomest lady-in-waiting.
"To sit wedged in with one's troop for five hours, and in a drizzle too!
Houses oughtn't to meet until the day's fine; I'm sure they are in no
hurry," said Cecil to himself, as he pocketed a dainty, filmy
handkerchief, all perfume, point, and embroidery, with the interlaced B.
C., and the crest on the corner, while he looked hopelessly out of the
window. He was perfectly happy, drenched to the skin on the moors
after a royal, or in a fast thing with the Melton men from Thorpe
Trussels to Ranksborough; but three drops of rain when on duty were a
totally different matter, to be resented with any amount of dandy's
lamentations and epicurean diatribes.
"Ah, young one, how are you? Is the day very bad?" he asked with

languid wistfulness as the door opened.
But indifferent and weary--on account of the weather--as the tone was,
his eyes rested with a kindly, cordial light on the newcomer, a young
fellow of scarcely twenty, like himself in feature, though much smaller
and slighter in build; a graceful boy enough, with no fault in his face,
except a certain weakness in the mouth, just shadowed only, as yet,
with down.
A celebrity, the Zu-Zu, the last coryphee whom Bertie had translated
from a sphere of garret bread-and-cheese to a sphere of villa
champagne and chicken (and who, of course, in proportion to the
previous scarcity of her bread-and-cheese, grew immediately intolerant
of any wine less than 90s the dozen), said the Cecil cared for nothing
longer than a fortnight, unless it was his horse, Forest King. It was very
ungrateful in the Zu-Zu, since he cared for her at the least a whole
quarter, paying for his fidelity at the tune of a hundred a month; and,
also, it was not true, for, besides Forest King, he loved his young
brother Berkeley--which, however, she neither knew nor guessed.
"Beastly!" replied the young gentleman, in reference to the weather,
which was indeed pretty tolerable for an English morning in February.
"I say, Bertie--are you in a hurry?"
"The very deuce of a hurry, little one; why?" Bertie never was in a
hurry, however, and he said this as lazily as possible, shaking the white
horsehair over his helmet, and drawing in deep draughts of Turkish
Latakia previous to parting with his pipe for the whole of four or five
hours.
"Because I am in a hole--no end of a hole--and I thought you'd help
me," murmured the boy, half penitently, half caressingly; he was very
girlish in his face and his ways. On which confession Rake retired into
the bathroom; he could hear just as well there, and a sense of decorum
made him withdraw, though his presence would have been wholly
forgotten by them. In something the same spirit as the French countess
accounted for her employing her valet to bring her her chocolate in
bed--"Est ce que vous appelez cette chose-la un homme?"--Bertie had,
on occasion, so wholly regarded servants as necessary furniture that he
had gone through a love scene, with that handsome coquette Lady
Regalia, totally oblivious of the presence of the groom of the chambers,
and the possibility of that person's appearance in the witness-box of the

Divorce Court. It was in no way his passion that blinded him--he did
not put the steam on like that, and never went in for any disturbing
emotion--it was simply habit, and forgetfulness that those functionaries
were not born mute, deaf, and sightless.
He tossed some essence over his hands, and drew on his gauntlets.
"What's up Berk?"
The boy hung his head, and played a little uneasily with an ormolu
terrier-pot, upsetting half the tobacco in it; he was trained to his
brother's nonchalant, impenetrable school, and used to his brother's set;
a cool, listless, reckless, thoroughbred, and