Sword and Gown | Page 2

guarded its secret far more successfully. The features were bold
and sharply cut, bronzed up to the roots of the crisp light-brown beard
and hair, except where the upper brow retained its original

fairness--presenting a startling contrast, like a wreath of snow lying late
in spring-time high up on the side of a black fell. You would hardly say
that they were devoid of expression, any more than that a perfectly
drilled soldier is incapable of activity; but you got puzzled in making
out what their natural expression was: it was not sternness, far less
ferocity--the face was much too impassible for either; and yet its
listlessness could never be mistaken for languor. The thin short lips
might be very pitiless when compressed, very contemptuous and
provocative when curling; but the enormous mustache, sweeping over
them like a wave, and ending in a clean stiff upward curve, made even
this a matter of mere conjecture. The cold, steady, dark eyes seldom
flashed or glittered; but, when their pupils contracted, there came into
them a sort of sullen, suppressed, inward light, like that of jet or cannel
coal. One curious thing about them was, that they never seemed to care
about following you, and yet you felt you could not escape from them.
The first hand-gripe, however, settled the question with most people:
few, after experiencing the involuntary pressure, when he did not in the
least mean to be cordial, doubted that there were passions in Royston
Keene--difficult perhaps to rouse, but yet more difficult to appease or
subdue.
His profession was evident. Indeed, it must be confessed that the
dragoon is not easily dissembled. I know a very meritorious
parish-priest, of fair repute too as a preacher, who has striven for years,
hard but unavailingly, to divest himself of the martial air he brought
with him out of the K.D.G. He strides down the village street with a
certain swagger and roll, as if the steel scabbard were still trailing at his
heel, acknowledging rustic bows with a slight quick motion of the
finger, like troopers' salutes; on the smooth shaven face is shadowed
forth the outline of a beard, nurtured and trimmed in old days with
more than horticultural science; in the pulpit and reading-desk gown
and surplice hang uneasily, like a disguise, on the erect soldierly figure,
and the effect of his ministrations is thereby sadly marred; for apposite
text, earnest exhortation, and grave rebuke flow with a curious
inconsistency from the lips of that well-meaning but unmitigated
Plunger.

Royston Keene was no exception to this rule, though he did not like to
be told so, and rather ignored the profession than otherwise. Perhaps he
had begun it early enough to have got tired of it; for he had now been
for some time on half-pay, and a brevet-major, after doing good service
in the Indian wars, and was not yet thirty-four. Molyneux had served in
the same light cavalry regiment as his subaltern, and there the
foundation was laid of their close alliance. It was not a very fair or
well-balanced one, being made up of implicit obedience, reliance, and
reverence on the one side, and a sort of protecting condescension on the
other--much like the old Roman relation between Client and Patron;
nevertheless it had outlasted many more sympathetic and better-looking
friendships.
They used to say of "The Cool Captain" (so he was always called off
parade), that "he could bring a boy to his bearings sooner than any man
in the army." Yet he was a favorite with them all. There was a regular
ovation among those "Godless horsemen" whenever he came into the
Club, or into their mess-rooms; they hung upon his simplest words with
a touchingly devout attention, and thought it was their own stupidity
when they could see nothing in them to laugh at or admire; they wrote
off all that they could remember of his sarcasms and
repartees--generally strangely travestied and spoiled by carriage--to
unlucky comrades, martyrized on far-off detachments, or vegetating
with friends in the country; the more ambitious, after much private
practice, strove to imitate his way of twisting his mustache as he stood
before the fire, though with some, to whom nature had been niggard of
hirsute honors, it was grasping a shadow and fighting with the air.
Certainly Molyneux never was so happy as in that society. Fond as he
was of his pretty wife, her influence was as nothing in the scale. She
complained of this, half in earnest, soon after they were married. The
fever of post-nuptial felicity was strong upon Harry just then, but he
did not attempt to deny the imputation. He only said, "My pet, I have
known him so much the longest!" I wonder, now, how many brides
would have admitted that somewhat