A Double Knot. George Manville Fenn
“No! Marcus.”
“Marcus.”
“That’s better. There, hang it all, Dick, you are a soldier; for heaven’s sake be one. Try to be manly, old fellow, and pitch over those silly affectations.”
“It’s all very well for you,” said Dick Millet, in an ill-used tone. “You are naturally manly. Why, you are five feet ten at least, and broad-shouldered and strong.”
“While you are only about five feet two, and slight, and have a face as smooth as a girl’s.”
“Five feet three and a half,” said the other quickly.
“How do you know?”
“I made the sergeant put me under the standard this morning. I can’t help it if I haven’t got a heavy brown moustache like you!”
“Who said you could help it, stupid? Why, what a little gander you are, Dick! I’m eight-and-twenty, and you are eighteen.”
“Nineteen!”
“Well, nineteen, then. There, there, you are only a boy yet, so why not be content to be a boy? You’ll grow old quite fast enough, my dear lad. Do you know why I like you?”
“Well, not exactly. But you do like me, don’t you, Glen?”
“Like you? Yes, when you are what I see before me now, boyish and natural. When you put on those confounded would-be manly airs, and grow affected and mincing as some confounded Burlington Arcade dandy, I think to myself, What a contemptible little puppy it is!”
“I say, you know—” cried the lad, and he tried to look offended.
“Say away, stupid! Well?”
Captain Marcus Glen, of Her Majesty’s 50th Lancers, a detachment of which, from the headquarters at Hounslow, were stationed at Hampton Court, sank back in his chair, let fall the newspaper he had been reading, and took out and proceeded to light a cigar, while Richard Millet flushed up angrily, got off the edge of the table where he had been sitting and swinging a neat patent-leather boot adorned with a spur, and seemed for a moment as if he were about to leave the room in a pet.
Marcus Glen saw this and smiled.
“Have a cigar, Dick?” he said.
The lad frowned, and it was on his lips to say, “Thanks, I have plenty of my own,” but his eyes met those of the speaker looking kindly and half laughingly in his, and the feeling of reverence for the other’s manly attributes, as well as his vanity at being the chosen friend of one he considered to be the finest fellow in the regiment, made him pause, hesitate, and then hold out his hand for the cigar.
“Better not take it, Dick. Tobacco stops the growth.”
The boy paused with the cigar in his hand, and the other burst into a merry laugh, rose lazily, lit a match, and handed it to the young officer, clapping him directly after upon the shoulder.
“Look here, Dick,” he said; “shall I give you the genuine receipt how to grow into a strong, honest Englishman?”
“Yes,” cried the lad eagerly, the officer and the would-be man dropped, for the schoolboy to reassert itself in full force. “I wish you would, Glen, ’pon my soul I do.”
“Forget yourself then, entirely, and don’t set number one up for an idol at whose shrine you are always ready to worship.”
“I don’t quite understand you,” said the lad, reddening ingenuously.
“Oh yes, you do, Dick, or you would not have been measured this morning, and made that little nick with the razor on your cheek in shaving off nothing but soap. If you did not worship your confounded small self, you would not have squeezed your feet into those wretched little boots, nor have waxed those twenty-four hairs upon your upper lip; and ’pon my word, Dick, that really is a work of supererogation, for the world at large, that is to say our little world at large, is perfectly ignorant of their existence.”
“Oh, I say, you are hard on a man, Glen! ’Pon my soul, you are;” and the handsome little fellow looked, with his flushed cheeks and white skin, more girlish than ever.
“Hard? Nonsense! I don’t want to see you grow into a puppy. I must give you a lesson now and then, or you’ll be spoiled; and then how am I to face Lady Millet after promising what I did?”
“Oh, I had a letter from mamma this morning,” said the lad; “she sent her kindest regards to you.”
“Thank her for them,” said the young officer. “Well, so the party went off all right, Dick?”
“Splendid! You ought to have been there. Gertrude would have been delighted to see you.”
“Humph! Out of place, my boy. Lady Millet wants a rich husband for your sister. I’m the wrong colour.”
“Not you. I don’t want Gerty to have someone she does not like.”
“But I thought you said that there was a Mr. Huish, or some such name?”
“Well, yes, there is; but it may not come off. Mamma hates the Huishes.”
“You’re a character, Dick!” said the officer laughingly. “There, I’m going to make you dissipated to get you square, so light your cigar, my lad; I won’t bully you any more,” he continued, smiling good-humouredly, “and you may shave till your beard comes if you like, and wax your—your eyebrows—I mean moustache, and dandify yourself a little, for I like to see you smart; but an you love me, as the poet says, no more of that confounded lisp. Now then, you’ve been reconnoitring, have you, and spying out the barrenness of the land?”
“Yes, and it’s a horrible one-eyed sort of a place. Why don’t you come and have a look?”
“I shall presently. Seen the Palace?”
“I had a walk round and went into the gardens, which are all very well—old-fashioned, you know; but the private apartments are full of old maids.”
“Ah, yes; maiden ladies and widows. Sort of aristocratic union, I’ve heard. Good thing for you, Dick.”
“Why?” said the lad, who had again perched himself on the edge of the table and was complacently glancing at his boots.
“Because your inflammable young heart will not be set on fire by antique virgins and blushing widows of sixty.”
“I don’t know so much about that,” cried the lad excitedly, taking off his natty little foraging cap. “Marcus, dear boy, I was walking round a cloister sort of place with a fountain in the middle, and then through a blank square court, and I saw three of the loveliest women, at one of the windows, I ever saw in my life.”
“Distance lends enchantment to the view, my dear boy. If you had gone closer you would have seen the wrinkles and the silvery hairs, if they had not been dyed.”
“I tell you they weren’t old,” continued Dick, whose eyes sparkled like those of a girl.
“I’m not a marrying man, for reasons best known to my banker and my creditors.”
“Two of them were dark and the other was fair,” continued the lad, revelling in his description. “Oh, those two dark girls! You never saw such eyes, such hair, such lovely complexions. Juno-like—that they were. I was quite struck.”
“Foolish?”
“No, no; the Lelys in one of the rooms are nothing to them.”
“Lilies?”
“Nonsense—Lelys: the pictures, Court beauties. I could only stand and gaze at them.”
“Young buck—at gaze,” said the other, smiling at the boy’s enthusiasm. “What was the fair one like?”