Ouida
Under Two Flags
AVIS AU LECTEUR
This Story was originally written for a military periodical. It has been fortunate enough to receive much commendation from military men, and for them it is now specially issued in its present form. For the general public it may be as well to add that, where translations are appended to the French phrases, those translations usually follow the idiomatic and particular meaning attached to these expressions in the argot of the Army of Algeria, and not the correct or literal one given to such words or sentences in ordinary grammatical parlance.
OUIDA.
CHAPTER I
BEAUTY OF THE BRIGADES.
I dont say but what hes difficult to please with his Tops, said Mr. Rake, factotum to the Hon. Bertie Cecil, of the 1st Life Guards, with that article of hunting toggery suspended in his right hand as he paused, before going upstairs, to deliver his opinions with characteristic weight and vivacity to the stud-groom, he is uncommon particular about em; and if his leathers aint as white as snow hell never touch em, tho as soon as the pack come nigh him at Royallieu, the leathers might just as well never have been cleaned, them hounds jump about him so; old Champions at his saddle before you can say Davy Jones. Tops are trials, I aint denying that, specially when youve jacks, and moccasins, and moor boots, and Russia-leather crickets, and turf backs, and Hythe boots, and waterproofs, and all manner of varnish things for dress, that none of the boys will do right unless you look after em yourself. But is it likely that he should know what a worry a Tops complexion is, and how hard it is to come right with all the Fast Brown polishing in the world? How should he guess what a piece of work it is to get em all of a color, and how like they are to come mottled, and how amost sure theyll ten to one go off dark just as theyre growing yellow, and put you to shame, let you do what you will to make em cut a shine over the country? How should he know? I dont complain of that; bless you, he never thinks. Its do this, Rake, do that; and he never remembers tisnt done by magic. But hes a true gentleman, Mr. Cecil; never grudge a guinea, or a fiver to you; never out of temper either, always have a kind word for you if you want, thorobred every inch of him; see him bring down a rocketer, or lift his horse over the Broad Water! Hes a gentlemannot like your snobs that have nothing sound about em but their cash, and swept out their shops before they bought their fine feathers!and Ill be dd if I care what I do for him.
With which peroration to his born enemy the stud-groom, with whom he waged a perpetual and most lively feud, Rake flourished the tops that had been under discussion, and triumphant, as he invariably was, ran up the back stairs of his masters lodgings in Piccadilly, opposite the Green Park, and with a rap on the panels entered his masters bedroom.
A Guardsman at home is always, if anything, rather more luxuriously accommodated than a young Duchess, and Bertie Cecil was never behind his fellows in anything; besides, he was one of the cracks of the Household, and women sent him pretty things enough to fill the Palais Royal. The dressing-table was littered with Bohemian glass and gold-stoppered bottles, and all the perfumes of Araby represented by Breidenback and Rimmel. The dressing-case was of silver, with the name studded on the lid in turquoises; the brushes, bootjack, boot-trees, whip-stands, were of ivory and tortoiseshell; a couple of tiger skins were on the hearth with a retriever and blue greyhound in possession; above the mantel-piece were crossed swords in all the varieties of gilt, gold, silver, ivory, aluminum, chiseled and embossed hilts; and on the walls were a few perfect French pictures, with the portraits of a greyhound drawn by Landseer, of a steeple-chaser by Harry Hall, one or two of Herrings hunters, and two or three fair women in crayons. The hangings of the room were silken and rose-colored, and a delicious confusion prevailed through it pell-mell; box-spurs, hunting-stirrups, cartridge cases, curb-chains, muzzle-loaders, hunting flasks, and white gauntlets, being mixed up with Paris novels, pink notes, point-lace ties, bracelets, and bouquets to be dispatched to various destinations, and velvet and silk bags for banknotes, cigars, or vesuvians, embroidered by feminine fingers and as useless as those pretty fingers themselves. On the softest of sofas, half dressed, and having half an hour before splashed like a waterdog out of the bath, as big as a small pond, in 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 womans; 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 fairfair as the fairest girls; 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 Regimentsnot 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. Cant you get that tawny color in the tigers 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 dont 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.
Howd 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 Ill look in at the stable after duty and see the screws are all right; and that hes to be ready to go down with them by my train to-morrownoon, you know. Send that note there, and the bracelets, to St. Johns Wood: and that white bouquet to Mrs. Delamaine. Bid Willon get some Banbury bits; I prefer the revolving mouths, and some of Woods 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. Ill take him down with me, but first put me into harness, Rake; its 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 couldnt 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 chargers 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 youre 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 between your horses legs, and the certainty of your riding down somebody and having a summons about it the next day! If all that isnt 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 ones troop for five hours, and in a drizzle too! Houses oughtnt to meet until the days fine; Im 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 dandys 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 wearyon account of the weatheras 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 Berkeleywhich, 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, Bertieare 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 holeno end of a holeand I thought youd 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 bedEst 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 persons appearance in the witness-box of the Divorce Court. It was in no way his passion that blinded himhe did not put the steam on like that, and never went in for any disturbing emotionit 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.
Whats 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 brothers nonchalant, impenetrable school, and used to his brothers set; a cool, listless, reckless, thoroughbred, and 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 ones shoulder.
Come, my boy; out with it! Its nothing very bad, Ill be bound!
I want some more money; a couple of ponies, said the boy a little huskily; he did not meet his brothers eyes that were looking straight down on him.
Cecil gave a long, low whistle, and drew a meditative whiff from his meerschaum.
Tres cher, youre always wanting money. So am I. So is everybody. The normal state of man is to want money. Two ponies. Whats 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 havent a notion where to get them to pay him again.
Heavy stakes, young one, for you, murmured Cecil, while his hand dropped from the boys 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 peoples on him as well, with an unremitting and thoughtless good nature.
I couldnt help it, pleaded the lad, with coaxing and almost piteous apology. I backed Grosvenors play, and you know hes always the most wonderful luck in the world. I couldnt tell hed go a crowner and have such cards as he had. How shall I get the money, Bertie? I darent 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 couldnt sell her in a minute