Ouida - Under Two Flags

The coarse and cruel irony flushed out with wicked, scorching malignity; lashing and upbraiding the man who was the victim of his own unwisdom and extravagance.

A slight tinge of color came on his son’s face as he heard; but he gave no sign that he was moved, no sign of impatience or anger. He lifted his cap again, not in irony, but with a grave respect in his action that was totally contrary to his whole temperament.

“This sort of talk is very exhausting, very bad style,” he said, with his accustomed gentle murmur. “I will bid you good-morning, my lord.”

And he went without another word. Crossing the length of the old-fashioned Elizabethan terrace, little Berk passed him: he motioned the lad toward the Viscount. “Royal wants to see you, young one.”

The boy nodded and went onward; and, as Bertie turned to enter the low door that led out to the stables, he saw his father meet the lad—meet him with a smile that changed the whole character of his face, and pleasant, kindly words of affectionate welcome; drawing his arm about Berkeley’s shoulder, and looking with pride upon his bright and gracious youth.

More than an old man’s preference would be thus won by the young one; a considerable portion of their mother’s fortune, so left that it could not be dissipated, yet could be willed to which son the Viscount chose, would go to his brother by this passionate partiality; but there was not a tinge of jealousy in Cecil; whatever else his faults he had no mean ones, and the boy was dear to him, by a quite unconscious, yet unvarying, obedience to his dead mothers’ wish.

“Royal hates me as game-birds hate a red dog. Why the deuce, I wonder?” he thought, with a certain slight touch of pain, despite his idle philosophies and devil-may-care indifference. “Well—I am good for nothing, I suppose. Certainly I am not good for much, unless it’s riding and making love.”

With which summary of his merits, “Beauty,” who felt himself to be a master in those two arts, but thought himself a bad fellow out of them, sauntered away to join the Seraph and the rest of his guests; his father’s words pursuing him a little, despite his carelessness, for they had borne an unwelcome measure of truth.

“Royal can hit hard,” his thoughts continued. “‘A pauper and a Guardsman!’ By Jove! It’s true enough; but he made me so. They brought me up as if I had a million coming to me, and turned me out among the cracks to take my running with the best of them—and they give me just about what pays my groom’s book! Then they wonder that a fellow goes to the Jews. Where the deuce else can he go?”

And Bertie, whom his gains the day before had not much benefited, since his play-debts, his young brother’s needs, and the Zu-Zu’s insatiate little hands were all stretched ready to devour them without leaving a sovereign for more serious liabilities, went, for it was quite early morning, to act the M. F. H. in his fathers’ stead at the meet on the great lawns before the house, for the Royallieu “lady-pack” were very famous in the Shires, and hunted over the same country alternate days with the Quorn. They moved off ere long to draw the Holt Wood, in as open a morning and as strong a scenting wind as ever favored Melton Pink.

A whimper and “gone away!” soon echoed from Beebyside, and the pack, not letting the fox hang a second, dashed after him, making straight for Scraptoft. One of the fastest things up-wind that hounds ever ran took them straight through the Spinnies, past Hamilton Farm, away beyond Burkby village, and down into the valley of the Wreake without a check, where he broke away, was headed, tried earths, and was pulled down scarce forty minutes from the find. The pack then drew Hungerton foxhole blank, drew Carver’s spinnies without a whimper; and lastly, drawing the old familiar Billesden Coplow, had a short, quick burst with a brace of cubs, and returning, settled themselves to a fine dog fox that was raced an hour-and-half, hunted slowly for fifty minutes, raced again another hour-and-quarter, sending all the field to their “second horses”; and after a clipping chase through the cream of the grass country, nearly saved his brush in the twilight when the scent was lost in a rushing hailstorm, but had the “little ladies” laid on again like wildfire, and was killed with the “who-whoop!” ringing far and away over Glenn Gorse, after a glorious run—thirty miles in and out—with pace that tired the best of them.

A better day’s sport even the Quorn had never had in all its brilliant annals, and faster things the Melton men themselves had never wanted: both those who love the “quickest thing you ever knew—thirty minutes without a check—such a pace!” and care little whether the finale be “killed” or “broke away,” and those of the old fashion, who prefer “long day, you know, steady as old time; the beauties stuck like wax through fourteen parishes, as I live; six hours, if it were a minute; horses dead-beat; positively walked, you know; no end of a day!” but must have the fatal “who-whoop” as conclusion—both of these, the “new style and the old,” could not but be content with the doings of the “demoiselles” from start to finish.

Was it likely that Cecil remembered the caustic lash of his father’s ironies while he was lifting Mother of Pearl over the posts and rails, and sweeping on, with the halloo ringing down the wintry wind as the grasslands flew beneath him? Was it likely that he recollected the difficulties that hung above him while he was dashing down the Gorse happy as a king, with the wild hail driving in his face, and a break of stormy sunshine just welcoming the gallant few who were landed at the death, as twilight fell? Was it likely that he could unlearn all the lessons of his life, and realize in how near a neighborhood he stood to ruin when he was drinking Regency sherry out of his gold flask as he crossed the saddle of his second horse, or, smoking, rode slowly homeward; chatting with the Seraph through the leafless, muddy lanes in the gloaming?

Scarcely; it is very easy to remember our difficulties when we are eating and drinking them, so to speak, in bad soups and worse wines in continental impecuniosity; sleeping on them as rough Australian shake-downs, or wearing them perpetually in Californian rags and tatters—it were impossible very well to escape from them then; but it is very hard to remember them when every touch and shape of life is pleasant to us—when everything about us is symbolical and redolent of wealth and ease—when the art of enjoyment is the only one we are called on to study, and the science of pleasure all we are asked to explore.

It is well-nigh impossible to believe yourself a beggar while you never want sovereigns for whist; and it would be beyond the powers of human nature to conceive your ruin irrevocable while you still eat turbot and terrapin, with a powdered giant behind your chair daily. Up in his garret a poor wretch knows very well what he is, and realizes in stern fact the extremities of the last sou, the last shirt, and the last hope; but in these devil-may-care pleasures—in this pleasant, reckless, velvet-soft rush down-hill—in this club-palace, with every luxury that the heart of man can devise and desire, yours to command at your will—it is hard work, then, to grasp the truth that the crossing sweeper yonder, in the dust of Pall Mall, is really not more utterly in the toils of poverty than you are!

“Beauty” was never, in the whole course of his days, virtually or physically, or even metaphorically, reminded that he was not a millionaire; much less still was he ever reminded so painfully.

Life petted him, pampered him, caressed him, gifted him, though of half his gifts he never made use; lodged him like a prince, dined him like a king, and never recalled to him by a single privation or a single sensation that he was not as rich a man as his brother-in-arms, the Seraph, future Duke of Lyonnesse. How could he then bring himself to understand, as nothing less than truth, the grim and cruel insult his father had flung at him in that brutally bitter phrase—“A Pauper and a Guardsman”? If he had ever been near a comprehension of it, which he never was, he must have ceased to realize it when—pressed to dine with Lord Guenevere, near whose house the last fox had been killed, while a groom dashed over to Royallieu for his change of clothes—he caught a glimpse, as they passed through the hall, of the ladies taking their preprandial cups of tea in the library, an enchanting group of lace and silks, of delicate hue and scented hair, of blond cheeks and brunette tresses, of dark velvets and gossamer tissue; and when he had changed the scarlet for dinner-dress, went down among them to be the darling of that charmed circle, to be smiled on and coquetted with by those soft, languid aristocrats, to be challenged by the lustrous eyes of his chatelaine and chere amie, to be spoiled as women will spoil the privileged pet of their drawing rooms whom they had made “free of the guild,” and endowed with a flirting commission, and acquitted of anything “serious.”