Under Two Flags Part 25

They rattled the boxes and threw again--Chanrellon's was three; his two.

"Ah!" he murmured. "Right kicks the beam and loses; it always does, poor devil!"

The Cha.s.seur leaned across the table, with his brown, fearless sunny eyes full of pleasure.

"Monsieur! never lament such good fortune for France. You belong to us now; let me claim you!"

He bowed more gravely than he had borne himself hitherto.

"You do me much honor; fortune has willed it so. One word only in stipulation."

"Chanrellon a.s.sented courteously.

"As many as you choose."

"I have a companion who must be brigaded with me, and I must go on active service at once."

"With infinite pleasure. That doubtless can be arranged. You shall present yourself to-morrow morning; and for to-night, this is not the season here yet; and we are triste a faire fremir; still I can show you a little fun, though it is not Paris!"

But he rose and bowed again.

"I thank you, not to-night. You shall see me at your barracks with the morning."

"Ah, ah! monsieur!" cried the Cha.s.seur eagerly, and a little annoyed.

"What warrant have we that you will not dispute the decree of the dice, and go off to your favorites, the Arabs?"

He turned back and looked full in Chanrellon's face his own eyes a little surprised, and infinitely weary.

"What warrant? My promise."

Then, without another syllable, he lounged slowly out through the soldiers and the idlers, and disappeared in the confused din and chiar-oscuro of the gas-lit street without, through the press of troopers, grisettes, merchants, beggars, sweetmeat-sellers, lemonade-sellers, curacoa sellers, gaunt Bedouins, negro boys, shrieking muleteers, laughing lorettes, and glittering staff officers.

"That is done!" he murmured to his own thoughts. "Now for life under another flag!"

Claude de Chanrellon sat mute and amazed a while, gazing at the open door; then he drank a fourth beaker of champagne and flung the emptied gla.s.s down with a mighty crash.

"Ventre bleu! Whoever he is, that man will eat fire, bons garcons!"

CHAPTER XIV.

"DE PROFUNDIS" BEFORE "PLUNGING."

Three months later it was guest-night in the messroom of a certain famous light cavalry regiment, who bear the reputation of being the fastest corps in the English service. Of a truth, they do "plunge" a little too wildly; and stories are told of bets over ecarte in their anteroom that have been prompt extinction forever and aye to the losers, for they rarely play money down, their stakes are too high, and moderate fortunes may go in a night with the other convenient but fatal system.

But, this one indiscretion apart, they are a model corps for blood, for dash, for perfect social accord, for the finest horseflesh in the kingdom, and the best president at a mess-table that ever drilled the cook to matchlessness, and made the ice dry, and the old burgundies, the admired of all newcomers.

Just now they had pleasant quarters enough in York, had a couple of hundred hunters, all in all, in their stalls, were showing the Ridings that they could "go like birds," and were using up their second horses with every day out, in the first of the season. A cracker over the best of the ground with the York and Ainsty, that had given two first-rate things quick as lightning, and both closed with a kill, had filled the day; and they were dining with a fair quant.i.ty of county guests, and all the splendor of plate, and ceremony, and magnificent hospitalities which characterize those beaux sabreurs wheresoever they go. At one part of the table a discussion was going on but they drank singularly little; it was not their "form" ever to indulge in that way; and the Chief, as dashing a sabreur as ever crossed a saddle, though lenient to looseness in all other matters, and very young for his command, would have been down like steel on "the boys," had any of them taken to the pastime of overmuch drinking in any shape.

"I can't get the rights of the story," said one of the guests, a hunting baronet, and M. F. H. "It's something very dark, isn't it?"

"Very dark," a.s.sented a tall, handsome man, with a habitual air of the most utterly exhausted apathy ever attained by the human features, but who, nevertheless, had been christened, by the fiercest of the warrior nations of the Punjaub, as the Shumsheer-i-Shaitan, or Sword of the Evil One, so terrible had the circling sweep of one back stroke of his, when he was quite a boy, become to them.

"Guard cut up fearfully rough," murmured one near him, known as "the Dauphin." "Such a low sort of thing, you know; that's the worst of it.

Seraph's name, too."

"Poor old Seraph! He's fairly bowled over about it," added a third.

"Feels it awfully--by Jove, he does! It's my belief he paid those Jew fellows the whole sum to get the pursuit slackened."

"So Thelusson says. Thelusson says Jews have made a cracker by it. I dare say! Jews always do," muttered a fourth. "First Life would have given Beauty a million sooner than have him do it. Horrible thing for the Household."

"But is he dead?" pursued their guest.

"Beauty? Yes; smashed in that express, you know."

"But there was no evidence?"

"I don't know what you call evidence," murmured "the Dauphin." "Horses are sent to England from Paris; clearly shows he went to Paris.

Ma.r.s.eilles train smashes; twenty people ground into indistinguishable amalgamation; two of the amalgamated jammed head foremost in a carriage alone; only traps in carriage with them, Beauty's traps, with name clear on the bra.s.s outside, and crest clear on silver things inside; two men ground to atoms, but traps safe; two men, of course Beauty and servant; man was a plucky fellow, sure, to stay with him."

And having given the desired evidence in lazy little intervals of speech, he took some Rhenish.

"Well--yes; nothing could be more conclusive, certainly," a.s.sented the Baronet, resignedly convinced. "It was the best thing that could happen under the unfortunate circ.u.mstances; so Lord Royallieu thinks, I suppose. He allowed no one to wear mourning, and had his unhappy son's portrait taken down and burned."

"How melodramatic!" reflected Leo Charteris. "Now what the deuce can it hurt a dead man to have his portrait made into a bonfire? Old lord always did hate Beauty, though. Rock does all the mourning; he's cut up no end; never saw a fellow so knocked out of time. Vowed at first he'd sell out, and go into the Austrian service; swore he couldn't stay in the Household, but would get a command of some Heavies, and be changed to India."

"Duke didn't like that--didn't want him shot; n.o.body else, you see, for the t.i.tle. By George! I wish you'd seen Rock the other day on the Heath; little Pulteney came up to him."

"What Pulteney?--Jimmy, or the Earl?"

"Oh, the Earl! Jimmy would have known better. These new men never know anything. 'You purchased that famous steeple-chaser of his from Mr.

Cecil's creditors, didn't you!' asks Pulteney. Rock just looks him over.

Such a look, by George! 'I received Forest King as my dead friend's last gift.' Pulteney never takes the hint--not he. On he blunders: 'Because, if you were inclined to part with him, I want a good new hunting strain, with plenty of fencing power, and I'd take him for the stud at any figure you liked.' I thought the Seraph would have knocked him down--I did, upon my honor! He was red as this wine in a second with rage, and then as white as a woman. 'You are quite right,' he says quietly, and I swear each word cut like a bullet, 'you do want a new strain with something like breeding in it, but--I hardly think you'll get it for the three next generations. You must learn to know what it means first.'

Then away he lounges. By Jove! I don't think the Cotton-Earl will forget this Cambridgeshire in a hurry, or try horse-dealing on the Seraph again."

Laughter loud and long greeted the story.

"Poor Beauty," said the Dauphin, "he'd have enjoyed that. He always put down Pulteney himself. I remember his telling me he was on duty at Windsor once when Pulteney was staying there. Pulteney's always horribly funked at Court; frightened out of his life when he dines with any royalties; makes an awful figure too in a public ceremony; can't walk backward for any money, and at his first levee tumbled down right in the Queen's face. Now at the Castle one night he just happened to come down a corridor as Beauty was smoking. Beauty made believe to take him for a servant, took out a sovereign, and tossed it to him. 'Here, keep a still tongue about my cigar, my good fellow!' Pulteney turned hot and cold, and stammered out G.o.d knows what, about his mighty dignity being mistaken for a valet. Bertie just laughed a little, ever so softly, 'Beg your pardon--thought you were one of the people; wouldn't have done it for worlds; I know you're never at ease with a sovereign!' Now Pulteney wasn't likely to forget that. If he wanted the King, I'll lay any money it was to give him to some wretched mount who'd break his back over a fence in a selling race."

"Well, he won't have him; Seraph don't intend to have the horse ever ridden or hunted at all."

"Nonsense!"

"By Jove, he means it! n.o.body's to cross the King's back; he wants weight-carriers himself, you know, and precious strong ones too. The King's put in stud at Lyonnesse. Poor Bertie! n.o.body ever managed a close finish as he did at the Grand National--last but two--don't you remember?"

"Yes; waited so beautifully on Fly-by-Night, and shot by him like lightning, just before the run-in. Pity he went to the bad!"

"Ah, what a hand he played at ecarte; the very best of the French science."