Colonel Holles hummed softly to himself as he dressed with care to keep his momentous appointment at the Cockpit, and when his toilet was completed you would scarcely have known him for the down-at-heel adventurer of yesterday, so fine did he appear.
Early that morning he had emptied the contents of his purse upon the bed, and counted up his fortune. It amounted to thirty-five pounds and some shillings. And Albemarle had promised him that, together with his commission, he should that morning receive an order on the Treasury for thirty pounds to meet his disbursements on equipment and the rest. He must, he considered, do credit to his patron. He argued that it was a duty. To present himself again at Whitehall in his rags were to disgrace the Duke of Albemarle; there might be introductions, and he would not have his grace blush for the man he was protecting.
Therefore, immediately after an early breakfast—at which, for once, he had been waited upon, not by Mrs. Quinn, but by Tim the drawer—he had sallied forth and made his way to Paternoster Row. There, yielding to the love of fine raiment inseparable from the adventurous temperament and to the improvident disposition that accompanies it, and also having regard to the officially military character he was about to assume, he purchased a fine coat of red camlet laced with gold, and small-clothes, stockings, and cravat in keeping. By the time he added a pair of boots of fine Spanish leather, a black silk sash, a new, gold-broidered baldric, and a black beaver with a trailing red plume, he found that fully three quarters of his slender fortune was dissipated, and there remained in his purse not above eight pounds. But that should not trouble a man who within a couple of hours would have pocketed an order upon the Treasury. He had merely anticipated the natural course of events, and counted himself fortunate to be, despite his reduced circumstances, still able to do so.
He had returned then with his bundle to the Paul’s Head, and, as he surveyed himself now in his mirror, freshly shaven, his long thick gold-brown hair elegantly curled, and a clump of its curls caught in a ribbon on his left, the long pear-shaped ruby glowing in his ear, his throat encased in a creaming froth of lace, and the fine red coat that sat so admirably upon his shoulders, he smiled at the memory of the scarecrow he had been as lately as yesterday, and assured himself that he did not look a day over thirty.
He created something of a sensation when he appeared below in all this finery, and, since it was unthinkable that he should tread the filth of the streets with his new Spanish boots, Tim was dispatched for a hackney-coach to convey the Colonel to Whitehall.
It still wanted an hour to noon, and this the Colonel considered the earliest at which he could decently present himself. But early as it was there was another who had been abroad and at the Cockpit even earlier. This was His Grace of Buckingham, who, accompanied by his friend Sir Harry Stanhope, had sought the Duke of Albemarle a full hour before Colonel Holles had been ready to leave his lodging.
A gentleman of the Duke’s eminence was not to be kept waiting. He had been instantly admitted to that pleasant wainscoted room overlooking the Park in which His Grace of Albemarle transacted business. Wide as the poles as were the two dukes asunder, the exquisite libertine and the dour soldier, yet cordial relations prevailed between them. Whilst correct and circumspect in his own ways of life, Monk was utterly without bigotry and as utterly without prejudices on the score of morals. Under his dour taciturnity, and for all that upon occasion he could be as brave as a lion, yet normally he was of the meekness of a lamb, combined with a courteous aloofness, which, if it earned him few devoted friends, earned him still fewer enemies. As a man gives, so he receives; and Monk, being very sparing both of his love and his hate, rarely excited either passion in others. He was careful not to make enemies, but never at pains to make friends.
“I desire your leave to present to your grace my very good friend Sir Harry Stanhope, a deserving young soldier for whom I solicit your grace’s good offices.”
Albemarle had heard of Sir Harry as one of the most dissolute young profligates about the Court, and, observing him now, his grace concluded that the gentleman’s appearance did justice to his reputation. It was the first time that he had heard him described as a soldier, and the description awakened his surprise. But of this he betrayed nothing. Coldly he inclined his head in response to the diving bow with which Sir Harry honoured him.
“There is no need to solicit my good offices for any friend of your grace’s,” he answered, coldly courteous. “A chair, your grace. Sir Harry!” He waved the fop to the second and lesser of the two chairs that faced his writing-table, and when they were seated he resumed his own place, leaning forward and placing his elbows on the table. “Will your grace acquaint me how I may have the honour of being of service?”