In justice to Dolores I should make it clear that she was not of the slatternly, dirty, lazy, half-breed type that pigs in a peignoir from twelve to twelve and snores again from midnight to midday. She was trim and dainty, used good perfume or none, rose early and went in the garden, loathed cheap and showy trash whether in dress, jewellery, or furniture; and was incapable of wearing fine shoes over holey stockings or a silk gown over dirty linen. No—there was nothing to offend the fastidious about Dolores, but there was everything to offend the good house-keeper and the moralist.
Frequently she would provide no dinner in order that we might be compelled to dine in public at a restaurant or a hotel, a thing she loved to do, and she would often send out for costly sweets and pastry, drink champagne (very moderately, I admit), and generally behave as though she were the wife of a man of means.
And she was an arrant, incorrigible, shameless flirt.
Well—I do not know that a virtuous vulgar dowd is preferable to a wicked winsome witch of refined habits and person, and I should probably have gone quietly on to bankruptcy without any row or rupture, but for Burker. Having been bred in a "gentle" home I naturally took the attitude of "as you please, my dear Dolores" and refrained from bullying when quiet indication of the inevitable end completely failed. Whether she intended to act in a reasonable manner and show some wifely traits when my £250 of legacy and savings was quite dissipated I do not know. Burker came before that consummation.
A number of gentlemen joined the Duri Volunteer Corps and formed a Mounted Infantry troop, and, though I am a good horseman, I was not competent to train the troop, as I had never enjoyed any experience of mounted military work of any kind. So Sergeant Burker, late of the 54th Lancers, was transferred to Duri as Instructor of the Mounted Infantry Troop. Naturally I did what I could to make him comfortable and, till his bungalow was furnished after a fashion, gave him our spare room.
Sergeant Barker was the ideal Cavalryman and the ideal breaker of hearts,—hearts of the Mary-Ann and Eliza-Jane order.
He was a black-haired, blue-eyed Irishman with a heart as black as his hair, and language as blue as his eye—a handsome, plausible, selfish, wicked devil with scarcely a virtue but pride and high courage. I disliked him at first sight, and Dolores fell in love with him equally quickly, I am sure.
I don't think he had a solitary gentlemanly instinct.
Being desirous of learning Mounted Infantry work, I attended all his drills, riding as troop-leader, and, between close attention to him and close study of the drill-book, did not let the gentlemen in the ranks know that, in the beginning, I knew as little about it as they did.
And an uncommonly good troop he soon made of it, too.