The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [77]
“Hang it! She ought to know I can’t get any leave now before the Twelfth, and then I’m booked to Glencairn. It’s all rot going on like this—” He took the letter in both hands as if to tear it up, but changing his mind, stuffed it in among the pocket handkerchiefs, and hurried downstairs in response to a shout from below. His polo-cart was at the door, and in it sat Captain Cursiter, wearing an expression of dismal patience that scarcely warranted Mr. Hawkins’ first remark.
“Well, you seem to be in a good deal of a hurry, old chap. Is it your dinner or is it Hope-Drummond?”
“When I’m asked to dinner at eight, I like to get there before half-past,” replied Cursiter sourly; “and when you’re old enough to have sense you will too.”
Mr. Hawkins drove at full pace out of the barrack gates before he replied, “It’s all very fine for you to talk as if you were a thousand, Snipey, but, by George! we’re all getting on a bit.” His ingenuous brow clouded under the peak of his cap, and his thoughts reverted to the letter that he had thrust into the sachet. “I’ve been pretty young at times, I admit, but that’s the sort of thing that makes you a lot older afterwards.”
“Good thing, too,” put in Cursiter unsympathetically.
“Yes, by Jove!” continued Mr. Hawkins; “I’ve often said I’d take a pull, and somehow it never came off, but I’m dashed if I’m not going to do it this time.”
Captain Cursiter held his peace, and waited for the confidence that experience had told him would inevitably follow. It did not come quite in the shape in which he had expected it.
“I suppose there isn’t the remotest chance of my getting any leave now, is there?”
“No, not the faintest; especially as you want to go away for the Twelfth.”
“Yes, I’m bound to go then,” acknowledged Mr. Hawkins with a sigh not unmixed with relief; “I suppose I’ve just got to stay here.”
Cursiter turned round and looked up at his young friend. “What are you up to now?”
“Don’t be such an owl, Cursiter,” responded Mr. Hawkins testily; “why should there be anything up because I want all the leave I can get? It’s a very common complaint.”
“Yes, it’s a very common complaint,” replied Cursiter, with a certain acidity in his voice that was not lost upon Hawkins; “but what gave it to you this time?”
“Oh, hang it all, Cursiter! I know what you’re driving at well enough; but you’re wrong. You always think you’re the only man in the world who has any sense about women.”
“I didn’t think I had said anything about women,” returned the imperturbable Cursiter, secretly much amused at the sensitiveness of Mr. Hawkins’ conscience.
“Perhaps you didn’t; but you’re always thinking about them and imagining other people are doing the same,” retorted Hawkins; “and may I ask what my wanting leave has to say to the question?”
“You’re in a funk,” said Cursiter; “though mind you,” he added, “I don’t blame you for that.”
Mr. Hawkins debated with himself for an instant, and a confession as to the perturbed condition of that overworked organ, his heart, trembled on his lips. He even turned round to speak, but found something so discouraging to confidence in the spare brown face, with its uncompromisingly bitten moustache and observant eyes, that the impulse was checked.
“Since you seem to know so much about me and the reasons why I want to leave and all the rest of it, I need say no more.”
Captain Cursiter laughed. “Oh! don’t on my account.”
Hawkins subsided into a dignified