Under Two Flags. Ouida
down upon by Jews tout net,
Or outlawed in a French guinguette!
Bertie was a great believer—if the words are not too sonorous and too earnest to be applied to his very inconsequent views upon any and everything—in the philosophy of happy accident. Far as it was in him to have a conviction at all,—which was a thorough-going, serious sort of thing not by any means his “form,”—he had a conviction that the doctrine of “Eat, drink, and enjoy, for to-morrow we die” was a universal panacea. He was reckless to the uttermost stretch of recklessness, all serene and quiet though his pococurantism and his daily manner were; and while subdued to the undeviating monotone and languor of his peculiar set in all his temper and habits, the natural dare-devil in him took out its inborn instincts in a wildly careless and gamester-like imprudence with that most touchy tempered and inconsistent of all coquettes—Fortune.
Things, he thought, could not well be worse with him than they were now. So he piled all on one coup, and stood to be sunk or saved by the Prix de Dames. Meanwhile, all the same, he murmured Mussetism to the Guenevere under the ruins of the Alte Schloss, lost or won a rouleau at the roulette-wheel, gave a banknote to the famous Isabel for a tea-rose, drove the Zu-Zu four in hand to see the Flat races, took his guinea tickets for the Concerts, dined with Princes, lounged arm-in-arm with Grand Dukes, gave an Emperor a hint as to the best cigars, and charmed a Monarch by unfolding the secret of the aroma of a Guards’ Punch, sacred to the Household.
Bertie who believed in bivalves but not in heroics, thought it best to take the oysters first and eschew the despair entirely.
He had one unchangeable quality—insouciance; and he had, moreover, one unchangeable faith—the King. Lady Guenevere had reached home unnoticed after the accident of their moonlight stag-hunt. His brother, meeting him a day or two after their interview, had nodded affirmatively, though sulkily, in answer to his inquiries, and had murmured that it was “all square now.” The Jews and the tradesmen had let him leave for Baden without more serious measures than a menace, more or less insolently worded. In the same fashion he trusted that the King’s running at the Bad, with the moneys he had on it, would set all things right for a little while; when, if his family interest, which was great, would get him his step in the First Life, he thought, desperate as things were, they might come round again smoothly, without a notorious crash.
“You are sure the King will ‘stay,’ Bertie?” asked Lady Guenevere, who had some hundreds in gloves (and even under the rose “sported a pony” or so more seriously) on the event.
“Certain! But if he don’t I promise you as pretty a tableau as your Asnieres one; for your sake, I’ll make the finish as picturesque as possible. Wouldn’t it be well to give me a lock of hair in readiness?”
Her ladyship laughed and shook her head; if a man killed himself, she did not desire that her gracious name should be entangled with the folly.
“No; I don’t do those things,” she said, with captivating waywardness. “Besides, though the Oos looks cool and pleasant, I greatly doubt that under any pressure you would trouble it; suicides are too pronounced for your style, Bertie.”
“At all events, a little morphia in one’s own rooms would be quieter, and better taste,” said Cecil, while he caught himself listlessly wondering, as he had wondered at Richmond, if this badinage were to turn into serious fact—how much would she care.
“May your sins be forgiven you!” cried Chesterfield, the apostle of training, as he and the Seraph came up to the table where Cecil and Cos Wentworth were breakfasting in the garden of the Stephanien on the race-day itself. “Liqueurs, truffles, and every devilment under the sun?—cold beef, and nothing to drink, Beauty, if you’ve any conscience left!”
“Never had a grain, dear boy, since I can remember,” murmured Bertie apologetically. “You took all the rawness off me at Eton.”
“And you’ve been taking coffee in bed, I’ll swear!” pursued the cross-examiner.
“What if he have? Beauty’s condition can’t be upset by a little mocha, nor mine either,” said his universal defender; and the Seraph shook his splendid limbs with a very pardonable vanity.
“Ruteroth trains; Ruteroth trains awfully,” put in Cos Wentworth, looking up out of a great silver flagon of Badminton, with which he was ending his breakfast; and referring to that Austrian who was to ride the Paris favorite. “Remember him at La Marche last year, and the racing at Vincennes—didn’t take a thing that could make flesh—muscles like iron, you know—never touched a soda even–”
“I’ve trained, too,” said Bertie submissively; “look how I’ve been waltzing! There isn’t harder work than that for any fellow. A deuxtemps with the Duchess takes it out of you like any spin over the flat.”
His censurers laughed, but did not give in their point.
“You’ve run shocking risks, Beauty,” said Chesterfield; “the King’s in fine running-form; don’t say he isn’t; but you’ve said scores of times what a deal of riding he takes. Now, can you tell us yourself that you’re in as hard condition as you were when you won the Military, eh?”
Cecil shook his head with a sigh.
“I don’t think I am; I’ve had things to try me, you see. There was that Verschoyle’s proposal. I did absolutely think at one time she’d marry me before I could protest against it! Then there was that shock to one’s whole nervous system, when that indigo man, who took Lady Laura’s house, asked us to dinner, and actually thought we should go!—and there was a scene, you know, of all earthly horrors, when Mrs. Gervase was so near eloping with me, and Gervase cut up rough, instead of pitying me; and then the field-days were so many, and so late into the season; and I exhausted myself so at the Belvoir theatricals at Easter; and I toiled so atrociously playing ‘Almaviva’ at your place, Seraph—a private opera’s galley slave’s work!—and, altogether, I’ve had a good many things to pull me down since the winter,” concluded Bertie, with a plaintive self-condolence over his truffles.
The rest of his condemning judges laughed, and passed the plea of sympathy; the Coldstreamer alone remained censorious and untouched.
“Pull you down! You’ll never pull off the race if you sit drinking liqueurs all the morning!” growled that censor. “Look at that!”
Bertie glanced at the London telegram tossed across to him, sent from a private and confidential agent.
“Betting here—two to one on L’Etoile; Irish Roan offered and taken freely. Slight decline in closing prices for the King; getting on French bay rather heavily at midnight. Fancy there’s a commission out against the King. Looks suspicious.” Cecil shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows a little.
“All the better for us. Take all they’ll lay against me. It’s as good as our having a ‘Commission out’; and if any cads get one against us it can’t mean mischief, as it would with professional jocks.”
“Are you so sure of yourself, Beauty?”
Beauty shook his head repudiatingly.
“Never am sure of anything, much less of myself. I’m a chameleon, a perfect chameleon!”
“Are you so sure of the King, then?”
“My dear fellow, no! I ask you in reason, how can I be sure of what isn’t proved? I’m like that country fellow the old story tells of; he believed in fifteen shillings because he’d once had it in his hand; others, he’d heard, believed in a pound; but, for his part, he didn’t, because he’d never seen it. Now that was a man who’d never commit himself; he might had had the Exchequer! I’m the same; I believe the King can win at a good many things because I’ve seen him do ‘em; but I can’t possibly tell whether he can get this, because I’ve never ridden him for it. I shall be able to tell you at three o’clock—but that you don’t care for–”
And Bertie, exhausted with making such a lengthened exposition—the speeches he preferred were monosyllabic—completed his sins against training with a long draught of claret-cup.
“Then