Under Two Flags

tably heavy. The Brigades were fairly worked to death, and the Indian service, in the heat of the

n; the skirmishes with sharpshooters of the bright-eyed Irregular Lancers; the foraging duty when fair commanders wanted ices or strawberries at garden parties; the ball-practice at Hornsey Handicaps; the terrible risk of crossing the enemy's lines, and being made to surrender as prisoners of war at the jails of St. George's, or of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge; the constant inspections of the Flying Battalions of the Ballet, and the pickets afterward in the Wood of St. John; the anxieties of the Club commissariats, and the close vigilance over the mess wines; the fatigue duty of ballrooms, and t

box, or private concert, or rose-shadowed boudoir, fashionably affiche without being visited by him. How he, in especial, had got his reputation it would have been hard to say, unless it were that he dressed a shade more perfectly than anyone, and with such inimitable carelessness in the perfection, too, and had an almost unattainable matchlessness in the sangfroid of his

by an evening's wear, gave a cook the cordon with his praise, and rendered a fresh-in

o help from the old lord, or from his elder brother, the heir; and now every chance of it was hopelessly closed; nothing but the whim or the will of those who held his floating paper, and the trade

at he sat at the Guards' mess, flirted with foreign princesses, or laughed at the gossamer gossip of the town over iced drinks in the clubs. His liabilities were tremendous, his resources totally exhausted; but such was the late

realize that midnight darkness, that yawning desolation which were nigh, while the sun was still so bright and the sea so tranquil, and

ted if a sharp shock and a second's blindness, and a sudden sweep down under the walls of the Cathedral or the waters of the Tagus, were not, on the whole, a quicker and pleasanter mode of extinction than that social earthquake-"gone to the bad with a crash"? And the Lisbonites did not more disbelieve in, and dream less of their coming ruin

uards at Lord's, and, in an unwary moment, having allowed himself to be decoyed afterward to a private concert, and very nearly proposed to in conse

the superior wisdom and beautiful simplicity of maki

t phase of law and life, and of having been enormously mulcted in damages because he was a Duke in future, and because, as he

ered Cecil, with philosophy. "It's like the Church, the Commo

t proposal during the Symphony in A, on which his thoughts ran, as the thoughts of one who has just escaped from an Alpine crevasse run on the past abyss in which he had been so nearly lost forever. "I say, Beauty, were you eve

once-on

e! And what

with a sort of pitying, sympathizing

now. She was just out-an angel with a train! She had delicious eyes-like a spaniel's you know-a cheek like this peach, and lips like that strawberry there, on the top of your ice. She looked at me, and I was in love! I knew who she was-Irish lord's daughter-girl I could have had for the asking; and I vow that I thought I would ask her-I

elt away. When you have been so near breaking your neck down the Matrimonial Matterhorn

so close that I could see those exquisite eyes lighten and gleam, those exquisite lips part with a sigh, that beautiful face beam with the sunshine of a radiant smile. It was the dawn of love I had taught her! I pressed nearer and nearer, and I caught her soft whisper as she leaned to her

on roll of his gay laughte

out of a serious thing; it is so awfully difficult to keep clear of them nowadays

sententiously. "Only think what she lost just through hungering for a chicken; if I hadn't proposed for her,-for one hard

en hungry in the wrong place, Cecil lounged out of the club to drive with half a dozen of his set to a water-par

etty French actress, being pelted with brandy cherries by the Zu-Zu, seeing their best cigars thrown away half-smoked by pretty pillagers, and driving back again to town in the soft, starry night, with the gay rhythms ringing from the box-seat as the leaders dashed al

eople, only born t

be al

such hair too; what's

their bosoms? I feel

t it was a musty old bore of a place, where they worried you about visas and luggage and all that, chloride of lim'd you if you came from the East, and couldn't give you a mount if it were ever so; and, in the third, instead of longin

, who, to do him this justice, was always as courteous to a comedienne as to a countess, went himself. Passing the open window of another room, he recognized the face of his little brother among a set of young Civil Serv

ssion of the Royallieu blood in its hottest intensity. He was playing with a terrible eagerness that went to Bertie's heart

nd leaned over

are going home; will you come?" he asked, with

with a wayward, i

rritably; "don't you see

almost of sadness in him, as he leaned farther

deuce for anybody; and you know Royal hates it. Come with us, Berk; there's a capital set here, and I'm going to half a dozen

ly; a sullen cloud over his f

ows," he muttered impatiently

oi

any more expostulation. The sweetness of his temper could never be annoyed, but also he never troubled himself to

shoulders for twenty," he thought; as he shook the ribbons and started t

losses; and he would essay, with all the consummate tact the world had taught him, to persuade him from his recklessness, and warn him of the consequences. But little Berk, though he loved his elder after a fashion, was wayward, selfish, and unstable as water. He would be very sorry sometimes, very repentant, and would promise anything under the sun; but five minutes afterwar

ived in the right set. "If it be very severe," he would say, "it may give him a pang once a twelvemonth-say the morning after a white

ews earlier than they told it; and as he lived, he was too constantly supplied from the world about him with amusement and variety to have to do anything beyond letting himself be amused; quietly fanned, as it were, with the lulling pun

asion, when a fair lady reproached him with this inertia. "The best style is only just to say yes or no-and be bored

how then? You would not get amused," sugges

dinners-social rockets, you know-who will always fire themselves off to sparkle instead of you, if you give them a whit

hread of the same flirtation at three different balls; showing himself for a moment at a Premier's At-home, and looking eminently graceful and pre-eminently weary in an ambassadress'

that cherished and ever-discreet confidant, a cheroot, the brutal demands of the Service; which would drag him off, in five hours' tim

urprise was a weakness of raw inexperience that Cecil never felt; his gazette as Commander-in-Chief, or the presence of the Wandering Jew in his lodgings would never have excite

imely apparition; but his eyes dwelt on him with a

r-Amu

Clearwell, Guineas, and Derby as a certainty. An accident to the young chestnut was the only thing that suggeste

d up confusedl

r women," he said peevishly; "there may

, stretching himself with a yawn. "With every regard to hospitality and the charms of your society, might I hint

, Bertie! I am the most mis

ence vanished from them, and a look of genuine and aff

not one who would have reminded the boy of his own advice and its reject

ll they wake me with my coffee; then I take them up with the cup and put them do

roachful anger, and in the gaslight his c

and you care no more than if you were a stone. You

that very race. There is a childish, wayward, wailing temper, which never counts benefits received save as title-deeds by which to demand others. Cecil looked at him with just a shadow of

's brutal now; you never see that form now

French novels, the cigarettes, and the gold essence-bottles with which it was strewn; there was som

the money for my life; no Jews will lend to me, I am under age; and-and"-his voice sank lower and grew more defiant, for he knew that the sole thing forbidden him peremptorily by both his father and his brothers was the thing

to him, and sets on that belief as though a bank were his to lose his gold from, was never more

ad come there when Lord Royallieu had dishonored his mother's name. In his code there was

he said, with a keener inflection of pain and contempt than had

er rather than of shame; he did not lift his eyes, but gazed sullenly

ently. "Are you such a mirror of honor yourself? I suppo

his friends, or one for which the law could not seize him. He was silent; he did not wish to have a scene of discussion with on

ut any change of expression, pu

I was. I am not altogether so satisfied with myself as to suggest myself as a model for anything, unless it were to stand in a tailor's window in Bond Street to show the muffs how to dress. That isn'

hat banished at a stroke his sullen defiance; he

ction of the trepidation on him; "as I live I would! I have had so much from him lately-you don'

Foreclo

"You know the lands are mortgaged as deeply as Monti and the entail would allow them. They threatened to foreclose-I think that's the word-and Royal has had Go

enaced his house; and to find how entirely his father's morbid mania against him severed him from all the inter

stretch of his limbs; it was his nature to glide off painful subjects.

t myself through the br

spendthrift,-he might have exercised a better influence, and his brother's young life might have been more prudently launched upon the world. He felt, too, with a sharper pang than he had ever felt it for himself, the brilliant beggary in which he lived, the utter inability he had to raise even the sum that the boy

, I am all down-hill; my bills may be called in any moment; when they are I must send in my papers to sell, and cut the country, if my duns don't catch me before, which they probably will; in which event I shall be to all intents and purposes

om it had to be given full as much as it could wound him whom it refused. Berkeley heard it in silence; his head still h

ave been behaving like a cur, and-and-all that, I know. But-there is one

, little one," said Cecil,

the Jews 'melt' at a risk. Now-now-look here. I can't see that there could be any harm in it. You are such chums with Lord Rockingham, and he's as rich as all the Jews put together. What could

ot color burned in his face, he darted a swift look at his brother, so full of dread and misery that it pierced Cecil to the quick as he r

"If I did such a thing as that, I should dese

, more evil, as he still bent his eyes on the

agely, with a plaintive moan of pain in the tone; he t

would be the shame of a gentleman," said Ceci

u will n

replied

something that made the supple, childish, petulant, cowardly nature of the boy shrink and be silenced; something for a single instant

at me as if I were a scoundrel," he moaned passionately. "The Seraph would give you the money at

ars, by what right should

ully scrupulous,

to push the argument. His character was too indolent to defend itself against asper

peak as if I were the greatest blackguard on earth. You'll let me go to the bad to-morrow rather than bend your pride to save me; you live like a Duke, and don't care if I should die in a debtor's prison! You only brag about

scarcely correct,

ough carelessness, partly through generosity; but the absence in his brother of that delicate, intangible, indescribable sensitive-nerve

the temperament created without it; it may be tau

ull through, never fear. Listen to me; go down to Royal, and tell him all frankly. I know him better than you; he will be savage for a second, but he would sell every stick and stone on the land for

shunning his brother's, the

if you like, that it is through following my follies that

his lips, as he said the last word

ear me? wi

want m

ur wor

my w

and leaving in its stead a wavering shadow. He rose with a sudden movement; his tumbled hair, his disordered attire, his bloodshot eyes, his haggard look of sleeplessness and excitement in strange contrast with the easy perfection of Cecil's dress and the calm languor of his attitude. Th

ve a lit

d have come in with the coffee. Never be impulsi

he had to send away the young one without help, though he knew that the course he had made him adopt would serve him more perm

t meet any man in the Guards face to face if I sunk myse

would gladly have believed that his brother

understand that I asked anything so dreadful; but I suppose you ha

r banish a pang of pain at his heart, less even for his brother's ingratitude than at h

ssities for which his help had been asked; and he was forced, despite all his will, to look for the first time blankly in the face the ruin that awaited him. There was no other name for it: it would be ruin complete and wholly inevitable. His signature would have been accepted no mor

n as the very necessities of existence; his very name forgotten in the world of which he was now the darling; a man without a career, without a hope, without a refuge-he could not realize that this was what awaited him then; this was the fate that must within so short a space be his. Life had gone so smoothly

were really come to this pass with him. It is so hard for a man who has the magnificence of the fashionable clubs open to him day and night to beat into his brain the truth that in six months hence he may be lying in the debtors' prison at Baden; it is so difficult for a man who has had n

I should win some heavy pots on the Prix de Dames, things would swim on again. I must win; the King will be as fit as in the Shi

hat he read himself to sleep with Terrail's "Club des Valets de Coeur," and slept i

e King was in the height of excitation, alarm, and haughty wrath. His ears were laid flat to his head, his nostrils were distended, his eyes were glancing uneasily with a nervous, angry fire rare in him, and ever and anon he lashed out his heels with a tre

oportionately to his own renown and dignity. The King was a very sweet-tempered horse, a perfect temper, indeed, and ductile to a touch from those he loved; but he liked very few, and would suffer liberties from none. And of a truth his prejudices were very just; and if his clever heels had ca

essive night went on as the speakers moved to a prudent distance; one of them thoughtfully chewing a bit of straw, after th

s his oats up to the last grain; leads the whole string such a rattling spin as never was spun but by a Derby crack

" "It'll only knock him over for the race; he'll be right as a trivet after it. What's your lit

ected of even worse games than that, and now is that set up with pride and sich-like that nobody's woice ain't heard here except his; I say what am I called on to bear it for?": and the head groom's tones grew hoarse and vehement, roaring louder under his injuries. "A man what's attended a Duke's 'osses ever since he was a shaver, to be put aside for that wor

straw savagely in two, and made an end of it, with a vindictive "Will yer be quiet th

his companion-the "cousin out o

you say?" relented

mer," retorted the Yorkshire cousin, with the

ny?" pursued Mr. Willo

with his arms folded to intimate that this and nothi

se as though he were a human thing to hear, to witness

'll spy on us.

you'll pain

ll-pain

-still with that cringing, terrified look backward to the horse, as an assassin may steal a glance before his deed at his unconsciou

n appetite to his neglected gruel. Unhappily for himself, his fine instincts could not teach him the conspiracy t