Colville of the Guards, Volume 3 (of 3) — John Shaqi
Colville of the Guards, Volume 3 (of 3)Grant, James
General
Colville of the Guards, Volume 3 (of 3)
Grant, James
British -- Afghanistan -- Fiction; Soldiers -- Fiction
'She agreed to run away with me once, so why should I not go in for
running away with her now?'
'Right you are, my boy!' said Dewsnap.
'You remember that cad, Colville of the Guards?' said Sleath,
viciously.
'I have heard of him,' replied Dewsnap, evasively. 'Well?'
'He trumped up a story about this girl being a cousin of his to keep
her, and her sister too, by Jove, to himself--a fact, Dolly; told me
in London they were his cousins, though he never said so when we were
at Dunkeld's place in Scotland. But now he has gone to Cabul, and
the devil go with him!'
'What are we to do if the Vierlander woman won't remain on board
after the fog lifts?' asked the sailing-master, Ringbolt.
'In that case we should have little difficulty in getting a sharp
girl to attend, or, better still, some knowing and suggestive elderly
party,' said Sleath.
'All right, sir--one has not far to look in Hamburg for what you
want.'
'Dash it all!' exclaimed Dewsnap, who was fast becoming rather
inebriated (this was not precisely what he said, but it looks milder
in print). 'This girl of yours, Sleath, is likely to give us a deal
of bother.'
'Not at all. I shall soon find a way to put an end to her nonsense,'
growled Sir Redmond.
Like the latter, Dewsnap always suspected everybody until he knew
they were innocent, and, if innocent, he deemed them fools. Thus he
never doubted in his mind that the apparent repugnance of Ellinor was
all coyness and affectation.
Mr. Adolphus Dewsnap, son of the late Alderman Sir Jephson Dewsnap,
Knight, a soap-boiler in Bow, where he made a colossal fortune, was a
fool and a cad of the first water, who looked up to Sleath, having a
title, as one of 'the upper ten,' though Sleath's father had been,
like the said alderman, a boy of the Foundling Hospital, from whence
perhaps emanate many of the grotesque names we find in London.
The story of their titles is simple, and one of everyday recurrence.
The fathers of Sleath and Dewsnap had been made respectively a
baronet and a knight for services rendered to the Ministry; but as
those of the former, though equally important, had been performed
with less scruple, he had been rewarded with the diploma of a baronet
of Great Britain, and a coat-of-arms, which taxed the ingenuity of
the entire College of Heralds.
Sir Redmond Sleath was a man of violent temper naturally, especially
when his will was thwarted; thus he felt himself humiliated, and,
when inflamed with wine, rendered almost savage by the spirit of
opposition and dismay he encountered in Ellinor Wellwood, whom he
still viewed as a poor girl, without parents, friends, or protector
other than Leslie Colville, and he now was far away indeed.
Dewsnap occasionally had half-tipsy thoughts of pretending to
befriend this stray girl, and getting her away somehow 'on his own
hook,' as he phrased it to himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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