"Nor I in the Border Horse," said I, quietly.
He turned to the mirror and began retying his queue ribbon. After a twist or two the smile came back to his lips and the jauntiness to his carriage.
"It's all in a lifetime," he said. "Lord, but I'm hungry, Cardigan! Honest Abraham, I haven't broken a crust since we left Schenectady!"
"Come on, then," I said; "we subalterns must not keep our superiors, you know."
"They wouldn't wait for us, anyway," he said, following me down-stairs to the breakfast-room, into which already Sir John and his suite were crowding.
The breakfast was short and dreary. Sir John's unsympathetic presence had never yet warmed even his familiars to gayety. Those who were under his orders found him severe and unbending; his equals, I think, distrusted him; but his superiors saw in him a latent energy which they believed might be worth their control some day, and so studied him carefully, prepared for anything from fidelity to indifference, and even, perhaps, treachery.
Benning, major in the Border Horse, strove indeed to liven the breakfast with liberal libations and jests, neither of which were particularly encouraged by Sir John. As for Colonel Guy Johnson, he brooded in his dish, a strange, dark, silent man who had never, to my knowledge, shown a single human impulse for either good or evil. He was a faultless executor of duty intrusted, obeying to the letter, yet never offering suggestions; a scrupulously clean man in speech and habit; a blameless husband, and an inoffensive neighbour. But that was all, and I had sooner had a stone idol as neighbour than Colonel Guy Johnson.
The living Johnsons seemed to be alike in nature. I do not even now understand why I thought so, but I sometimes believed that they had, deep in them, something of that sombre ferocity which burned in the Butlers. Yet to me they had exhibited nothing but the most passionless reserve.
When the gloomy breakfast was ended, Colonel Guy Johnson conducted his guests to the porch, where they made ready for the inspection of our two stone block-houses and the new artillery in the barracks, sent recently by Governor Tryon at Sir John's request.
Supposing I was to follow, as I no longer remained aide-de-camp to the major-general, I started off with Rodman Girdwood, but was recalled by a soldier, who reported that Sir John awaited me in the library.