"Lord Lovel he stood at the garden gate, A-combing his milk-white steed."
It was the winter of 186- when I next met Guy Heavystone. He had left the University and had entered the 76th "Heavies." "I have exchanged the gown for the sword, you see," he said, grasping my hand, and fracturing the bones of my little finger, as he shook it.
I gazed at him with unmixed admiration. He was squarer, sterner, and in every way smarter and more remarkable than ever. I began to feel toward this man as Phalaster felt towards Phyrgino, as somebody must have felt toward Archididasculus, as Boswell felt toward Johnson.
"Come into my den," he said, and lifting me gently by the seat of my pantaloons he carried me up stairs and deposited me, before I could apologize, on the sofa. I looked around the room. It was a bachelor's apartment, characteristically furnished in the taste of the proprietor. A few claymores and battle-axes were ranged against the wall, and a culverin, captured by Sir Ralph Heavystone, occupied the corner, the other end of the room being taken up by a light battery. Foils, boxing-gloves, saddles, and fishing-poles lay around carelessly. A small pile of billets-doux lay upon a silver salver. The man was not an anchorite, nor yet a Sir Galahad.
I never could tell what Guy thought of women. "Poor little beasts," he would often say when the conversation turned on any of his fresh conquests. Then, passing his hand over his marble brow, the old look of stern fixedness of purpose and unflinching severity would straighten the lines of his mouth, and he would mutter, half to himself, "S'death!"
"Come with me to Heavystone Grange. The Exmoor Hounds throw off to-morrow. I'll give you a mount," he said, as he amused himself by rolling up a silver candlestick between his fingers. "You shall have Cleopatra. But stay," he added, thoughtfully; "now I remember, I ordered Cleopatra to be shot this morning."
"And why?" I queried.
"She threw her rider yesterday and fell on him--"
"And killed him?"
"No. That's the reason why I have ordered her to be shot. I keep no animals that are not dangerous--I should add--DEADLY!" He hissed the last sentence between his teeth, and a gloomy frown descended over his calm brow.
I affected to turn over the tradesman's bills that lay on the table, for, like all of the Heavystone race, Guy seldom paid cash, and said:--"You remind me of the time when Leonidas--"
"O, bother Leonidas and your classical allusions. Come!"
We descended to dinner.
