Part 18 (1/2)
”As a rule, you know,” the Captain continued, ”coming out for a ride here, except at midnight, means standing up under a willow and wondering how the deuce you'll get home.”
”Well, you're not under a willow now.”
”No; I was, but I had to quit. Derosne and Miss Medland turned me out.”
”Ah!”
”Yes.”
”You felt you ought to go?”
”My tact told me so. I say, Kilshaw, what do you make of that?”
”Nothing in it,” answered Kilshaw confidently.
Captain Heseltine had but one test of sincerity, and it was a test to which he knew Kilshaw was, as a rule, quite ready to submit. He took out a small note-book from one pocket and a pencil from the other.
”What'll you lay that it doesn't come off?” he asked.
”I won't bet.”
”Oh,” said the Captain, scornfully implying that he ceased to attach value to Mr. Kilshaw's judgment.
”I won't bet, because I know.”
”The deuce you do!” exclaimed Heseltine, promptly re-pocketing his apparatus.
”And, if you want another reason why I won't bet,” continued Kilshaw, who did not like the Captain's air of incredulity, ”I'll tell you. I'm going to stop it myself.”
”Oh, of course, if _you_ object!” said the Captain, with undisguised irony. ”I hope, though, that you'll let me have a shot, after d.i.c.k.”
”You won't want it, if you're a wise man. You wait a bit, my friend,”
and with a grim nod of his head, Kilshaw rode on.
The Captain looked after him with a meditative stare. Then he glanced at his watch.
”That beggar knows something,” said he. ”I think I'll go and interrupt friend Richard.” And he continued, apostrophising the absent d.i.c.k--”To stay out, my boy, may not be easy; but to get out when you're once in, is the deuce!”
CHAPTER XII.
AN ABSURD AMBITION.
_Suave mari magno_--Like so many of us who quote these words, Mr. c.o.xon could not finish the line, but the tag as it stood was enough to express his feelings. If the Cabinet were going to the bottom, he was not to sink with it. If he had one foot in that leaky boat, the other was on firm ground. He had received unmistakable intimations that, if he would tread the path of penitence as Puttock had, the way should be strewn with roses, and the fatted calf duly forthcoming at the end of the journey. He had a right to plume himself on the dexterity which had landed him in such a desirable position, and he was fully awake to the price which that position made him worth. Now a man who commands a great price, thought Mr. c.o.xon, is a great man. So his meditations--which, in this commercial age, seem hardly open to adverse criticism--ran, as he walked towards Government House, just about the same time as Mr. Kilshaw was also thinking of betaking himself thither. A great man (Mr. c.o.xon's reflections continued) can aspire to the hand of any lady--more especially when he depends not merely on intellectual ability (which is by no means everything), but is also a man of culture, of breeding, of a University education, and of a very decent income. He forbore to throw his personal attractions into the scale, but he felt that if he were in other respects a suitable aspirant, no failure could await him on that score. Vanity apart, he could not be blind to the fact that he was in many ways different from most of his compatriots, still more from most of his colleagues.
”In all essentials I am an Englishman, pure and simple,” thought he, as he entered the gates of Government House; but, the phrase failing quite to satisfy him, he subst.i.tuted, as he rang the bell, ”An English gentleman.”
”Shall we go into the garden?” said Lady Eynesford, after she had bidden him welcome. ”I dare say we shall find Miss Scaife there,” and, as she spoke, she smiled most graciously.