"Not going!" thought Frank. "How very odd! Now, what can a fellow like this have to do down here on the sly? Country walk! Gammon! He's after some robbery, I'll lay a hundred!" But he only said:
"My Cornet's going to drive. I don't think I shall be on the Heath at all, unless I gallop a hack over in the afternoon."
"Hot work," answered Picard carelessly. "I thought everybody was keen about racing, except me." But he too wondered at the taste of his entertainer in thus preferring a solitary morning to a pleasant drive in the merriest of company, accounting for it on a theory of his own.
"War-path, of course! and, keen as a true Indian, means to follow it up alone. Got 'sign,' no doubt, and sticks to the trail like a wolf. Won't come back, I'll lay a thousand, without 'raising hair.' Ah! this child, too, could take scalps once, and hang them round his belt, with the best of ye! And now——Well, I'm about no harm to-day, at any rate, and that's refreshing, if it's only for a change!"
So he sat himself down on a garden seat in front of the officers' quarters, where, producing a case the size of a portmanteau, filled with such cigars as are only consumed by trans-Atlantic smokers, and, offering them liberally all round, he soon became the centre of an admiring circle, civil as well as military, to whom he related sundry experiences of international warfare in the States, well told, interesting, no doubt, and more startling than probable.
Mr. Picard had certain elements of popularity, such as launch a man in general society fairly enough, but fail to afford him secure anchorage in that restless element. He was good-looking, well-dressed, plausible, always ready to eat, drink, smoke, dance, play, or, indeed, partake in the amusement of the hour. He looked like a gentleman, but nobody knew who he was. He seemed to have a sufficiency of money, but nobody knew where he got it. The Court Guide vouched for him as J. Picard, Esq., under the letter "P," with two addresses, a first-rate hotel and a third-rate club. The Morning Post even took charge of him in its fashionable arrivals and departures. Men began to know him after "the Epsom Spring," and by Hampton Races he had ceased to arouse interest, scarcely even excited curiosity, but had failed to make a single female acquaintance above the class of Mrs. Battersea; nor had he, indeed, gained one step of the social ladder people take such pains to climb, in order to obtain, after all, but a wider view from Dan to Beersheba.
Such men crop up like mushrooms at the beginning of every London season, and fade like annuals with the recess. Goodwood sees the last expiring blaze of their splendour, and next year, if you ask for them, they are extinct; but, as the Highland soldier says, "There are plenty more where they come from." In dress, style, manner, they vary but little. All dine constantly at Richmond, shoot well, and drive a team, in the handling of which they improve vastly as the season wears on.
Mr. Picard could, however, lay claim to a little more interest than the rest, in his character of a soldier-adventurer, to which he was entitled by service with the Confederates during their prolonged struggle against overwhelming odds. Somehow, every soldier-adventurer concerned in that war seems to have been a Southerner. Certainly the romance was all on their side, though the scale, weighed down by "great battalions," turned in favour of the North. From his own account, Picard had done his "little best," as he called it, for the party he espoused; and observing a gash on his cheek, which could only be a sabre-cut, it was hard to listen coldly while he talked of Stonewall Jackson and Brigadier Stuart as ordinary men do of Bright and Gladstone—perhaps with no more familiar knowledge of the heroes than a general public has of these statesmen. Still, the subject was captivating and well treated, the contrast between Stuart's dashing, desperate, rapidly-moving light horsemen and Her Majesty's Cuirassiers of the Guard was exciting, the similarity in many points flattering to both. Cornets listened open-mouthed, and felt the professional instinct rising strong in their martial young souls; older officers smiled approbation, not disdaining to gather hints from one who had seen real warfare, as to nosebags, haversacks, picket-ropes, and such trifling minutiæ as affect the efficiency of armies and turn the tide of campaigns. When the drag appeared nobody discovered that Frank Vanguard had made a masterly retreat; and Picard had received as many invitations to remain and be "put-up" in barracks as would have lasted him till the regiment changed quarters, and his entertainers had found out half he said was an old story and the other half not true.