Under Two Flags | Page 7

impassive set, whose first
canon was that you must lose your last thousand in the world without
giving a sign that you winced, and must win half a million without
showing that you were gratified; but he had something of girlish
weakness in his nature, and a reserve in his temperament that was with
difficulty conquered.
Bertie looked at him, and laid his hand gently on the young one's
shoulder.
"Come, my boy; out with it! It's nothing very bad, I'll be bound!"
"I want some more money; a couple of ponies," said the boy a little
huskily; he did not meet his brother's eyes that were looking straight
down on him.
Cecil gave a long, low whistle, and drew a meditative whiff from his
meerschaum.
"Tres cher, you're always wanting money. So am I. So is everybody.
The normal state of man is to want money. Two ponies. What's it for?"
"I lost it at chicken-hazard last night. Poulteney lent it me, and I told
him I would send it him in the morning. The ponies were gone before I
thought of it, Bertie, and I haven't a notion where to get them to pay
him again."
"Heavy stakes, young one, for you," murmured Cecil, while his hand
dropped from the boy's shoulder, and a shadow of gravity passed over
his face; money was very scarce with himself. Berkeley gave him a
hurried, appealing glance. He was used to shift all his anxieties on to
his elder brother, and to be helped by him under any difficulty. Cecil
never allotted two seconds' thought to his own embarrassments, but he
would multiply them tenfold by taking other people's on him as well,
with an unremitting and thoughtless good nature.

"I couldn't help it," pleaded the lad, with coaxing and almost piteous
apology. "I backed Grosvenor's play, and you know he's always the
most wonderful luck in the world. I couldn't tell he'd go a crowner and
have such cards as he had. How shall I get the money, Bertie? I daren't
ask the governor; and besides I told Poulteney he should have it this
morning. What do you think if I sold the mare? But then I couldn't sell
her in a minute----"
Cecil laughed a little, but his eyes, as they rested on the lad's young,
fair, womanish face, were very gentle under the long shade of their
lashes.
"Sell the mare! Nonsense! How should anybody live without a hack? I
can pull you through, I dare say. Ah! by George, there's the quarters
chiming. I shall be too late, as I live."
Not hurried still, however; even by that near prospect, he sauntered to
his dressing-table, took up one of the pretty velvet and gold- filigreed
absurdities, and shook out all the banknotes there were in it. There were
fives and tens enough to count up 45 pounds. He reached over and
caught up a five from a little heap lying loose on a novel of Du Terrail's,
and tossed the whole across the room to the boy.
"There you are, young one! But don't borrow of any but your own
people again, Berk. We don't do that. No, no!--no thanks! Shut up all
that. If ever you get in a hole, I'll take you out if I can. Good-by--will
you go to the Lords? Better not--nothing to see, and still less to hear.
All stale. That's the only comfort for us--we are outside!" he said, with
something that almost approached hurry in the utterance; so great was
his terror of anything approaching a scene, and so eager was he to
escape his brother's gratitude. The boy had taken the notes with
delighted thanks indeed, but with that tranquil and unprotesting
readiness with which spoiled childishness or unhesitating selfishness
accepts gifts and sacrifices from another's generosity, which have been
so general that they have ceased to have magnitude. As his brother
passed him, however, he caught his hand a second, and looked up with
a mist before his eyes, and a flush half of shame, half of gratitude, on
his face.
"What a trump you are!--how good you are, Bertie!"
Cecil laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
"First time I ever heard it, my dear boy," he answered, as he lounged

down the staircase, his chains clashing and jingling; while, pressing his
helmet on to his forehead and pulling the chin scale over his mustaches,
he sauntered out into the street where his charger was waiting.
"The deuce!" he thought, as he settled himself in his stirrups, while the
raw morning wind tossed his white plume hither and thither. "I never
remembered!--I don't believe I've left myself money enough to take
Willon and Rake and the cattle down to the Shires to-morrow. If I
shouldn't have kept enough to take my