Under Two Flags | Page 9

the
steel-mounted hoof of a dead pet hunter.
"Insufferable!" murmured Cecil, hiding another yawn behind his

gauntlet; "the Line's nothing half so bad as this; one day in a London
mob beats a year's campaigning; what's charging a pah to charging an
oyster-stall, or a parapet of fascines to a bristling row of umbrellas?"
Which question as to the relative hardships of the two Arms was a
question of military interest never answered, as Cecil scattered the
umbrellas right and left, and dashed from the Houses of Parliament full
trot with the rest of the escort on the return to the Palace; the afternoon
sun breaking out with a brightened gleam from the clouds, and flashing
off the drawn swords, the streaming plumes, the glittering breastplates,
the gold embroideries, and the fretting chargers.
But a mere sun-gleam just when the thing was over, and the escort was
pacing back to Hyde Park barracks, could not console Cecil for fog,
wind, mud, oyster-vendors, bad odors, and the uproar and riff-raff of
the streets; specially when his throat was as dry as a lime-kiln, and his
longing for the sight of a cheroot approaching desperation. Unlimited
sodas, three pipes smoked silently over Delphine Demirep's last novel,
a bath well dashed with eau de cologne, and some glasses of Anisette
after the fatigue-duty of unharnessing, restored him a little; but he was
still weary and depressed into gentler languor than ever through all the
courses at a dinner party at the Austrian Embassy, and did not recover
his dejection at a reception of the Duchess of Lydiard-Tregoze, where
the prettiest French Countess of her time asked him if anything was the
matter.
"Yes!" said Bertie with a sigh, and a profound melancholy in what the
woman called his handsome Spanish eyes, "I have had a great
misfortune; we have been on duty all day!"
He did not thoroughly recover tone, light and careless though his
temper was, till the Zu-Zu, in her diamond-edition of a villa, prescribed
Crème de Bouzy and Parfait Amour in succession, with a considerable
amount of pine-apple ice at three o'clock in the morning, which
restorative prescription succeeded.
Indeed, it took something as tremendous as divorce from all forms of
smoking for five hours to make an impression on Bertie. He had the
most serene insouciance that ever a man was blessed with; in worry he
did not believe--he never let it come near him; and beyond a little
difficulty sometimes in separating too many entangled rose-chins
caught round him at the same time, and the annoyance of a

miscalculation on the flat, or the ridge-and-furrow, when a Maldon or
Danebury favorite came nowhere, or his book was wrong for the Grand
National, Cecil had no cares of any sort or description.
True, the Royallieu Peerage, one of the most ancient and almost one of
the most impoverished in the kingdom, could ill afford to maintain its
sons in the expensive career on which it had launched them, and the
chief there was to spare usually went between the eldest son, a
Secretary of Legation in that costly and charming City of Vienna, and
the young one, Berkeley, through the old Viscount's partiality; so that,
had Bertie ever gone so far as to study his actual position, he would
have probably confessed that it was, to say the least, awkward; but then
he never did this, certainly never did it thoroughly. Sometimes he felt
himself near the wind when settling-day came, or the Jews appeared
utterly impracticable; but, as a rule, things had always trimmed
somehow, and though his debts were considerable, and he was literally
as penniless as a man can be to stay in the Guards at all, he had never in
any shape realized the want of money. He might not be able to raise a
guinea to go toward that long-standing account, his army tailor's bill,
and post obits had long ago forestalled the few hundred a year that,
under his mother's settlements, would come to him at the Viscount's
death; but Cecil had never known in his life what it was not to have a
first-rate stud, not to live as luxuriously as a duke, not to order the
costliest dinners at the clubs, and be among the first to lead all the
splendid entertainments and extravagances of the Household; he had
never been without his Highland shooting, his Baden gaming, his
prize-winning schooner among the R. V. Y. Squadron, his September
battues, his Pytchley hunting, his pretty expensive Zu- Zus and other
toys, his drag for Epsom and his trap and hack for the Park, his crowd
of engagements through the season, and his bevy of fair leaders of the
fashion to smile on him, and shower their invitation-cards on him, like
a rain of