Part 9 (2/2)
”There was an officer in his service, mild and stupid to a degree. He had been a b.u.t.t all his life; bullied at school, at Addis...o...b.., and in his corps worst of all.
”They were attacking a hill-fort, and the fire from wall-pieces and matchlocks was so heavy that the storming-party would not face it. Among those who retreated were two of his superior officers and chief tormentors. The junior lieutenant saw them cowering away to seek shelter, and laughed out loud; then he flung his shako before him into the fort, and led the sepoys back to the charge, and right over the breastwork--bareheaded and cheering. He was shot down inside, and lived only a few hours, all the time in horrible agony; but Western told us that Bayard or Sidney could have made no braver or calmer ending.”
”You are right,” Livingstone said. ”The Roundheads fought fully as well as the Cavaliers. I only know of two instances where the thoroughbreds had the advantage of a contrast. One was when the Scottish regiment took the island in the Rhine; the other was the exploit of the _Gants Glaces_. Don't you know it? It's worth hearing.
”They were attacking some town in the wars of the Fronde. The breach was scarcely practicable, and the best of the besieging army had recoiled from it with great loss. The Black Mousquetaires stood by in all the coquetry of scarf, and plume, and fringed scented gloves, laughing louder at each repulse of the Linesmen. The soldiers heard them and gnashed their teeth. At last there was a murmur, and then a shout--_'En avant les Gants Glaces!'_ They wanted to see 'the swells' beaten too.
Then the Household Brigade went up and carried the breach, leaving a third of their number on it. The general in command made the whole army defile past their _guidon_, and salute it with sloped standards.
”No; very few men are physical cowards in battle, whatever they may be across country. I don't believe Paris was, when he ran from Menelaus; and Helen did not think so, though she teased him about it, or she would never have spoken to him again. I rather imagine his feeling was that of a certain Guardsman of our acquaintance, who said, declining the ordeal of combat, that 'his first duty was to his partners, and this did not allow him to risk a black eye.'”
”Might not remorse at the sight of the man he had injured have had something to do with his flight?” Bruce asked.
He was full of moral sentiments--that man; only you could not look at him without fancying that they sprung more from an inclination to be contradictious and disagreeable than from any depth of principle.
”Absurd,” Guy retorted. ”Wasn't he a heathen, and rather an immoral one?
It was of profligates with far greater advantages of education that some one said, '_'Le remords nait de l'abandon, et non de la faute_.' The walls of Troy were strong then, and the Destroyer-of-s.h.i.+ps safe behind them, 'getting herself up alarmingly' for his return. No wonder Menelaus was eager for the duel: he was staking his loneliness against Paris's nine points of the law.”
Sir Henry Fallowfield smiled approvingly.
”Yes,” he observed, not answering what had been said, but evidently following out a train of his own thought. ”Modern exquisites have courage, and self-possession, and conceit--great elements of success with women, I own--but they have not much more. I am certain Charley, who is a favorable specimen of the cla.s.s, often affects silence because he has nothing on earth to say. There is a decadence since my younger days (I hope I speak dispa.s.sionately), and how very far we fell short of the _roues_ of the Regence! We could no more match them than a fighting-man in good training could stand up to one of the old Pict giants. Look at Richelieu: good at all points--in the battle, in the boudoir, in the Bastille--a dangerous rival at the two ages of ordinary men's first and second childhood.”
”He was a great man in his way,” I a.s.sented. ”Do you remember his answer to the d.u.c.h.esse de Maine, when she asked him, for a political purpose, if he could remain faithful for one week to an intrigue then twenty-four hours old? '_Madame, quand une fois j'embra.s.se un parti, je suis capable des plus grandes sacrifices pour le soutenir._' The object of that heroic constancy was the Marechale de Villars, one of the loveliest women in France. It was the sublime of fatuity--was it not?”
”Well, I don't know,” said Charley, settling himself comfortably in his cus.h.i.+ons, and glancing almost imperceptibly at Bruce; ”they seem to fancy us, notwithstanding. We have only one great obstacle--the mothers that _bore_ us.”
Be it known that ”they,” used simply, stood in his vocabulary for the fair s.e.x in general.
”Nonsense,” replied Fallowfield; ”don't be so ungrateful. You don't know what you owe to those anxious parents. It helps you enormously, being the objects of perpetual warnings from husbands and chaperons, the first considering you _mauvais sujets_, the last _mauvais partis_; for you _are_ 'detrimentals,' for the most part, you will own.”
”_Vet.i.tum ergo cupitum_,” interrupted Livingstone. ”A good many moralists before and since old Rabelais have discoursed on that text.
The Chief of Errington was probably much more agreeable, besides being a better match than Jock of Hazeldean, who clearly was what an old Frenchman lately described to me--'_un vaurien, mon cher, qui court les filles et qui n'a pas le son_.' But then poor Frank was the government candidate; so, of course, in a popular election, he went to the wall.”
Sir Henry's face grew more pensive and grave as he said, ”It is very hard on the women, certainly, that our race should have degenerated so, for I believe in my conscience they are as clever and wicked, and appreciate temptation as much as ever.” (The gusto with which he said this is indescribable.) ”There is the Bellasys, for instance, with a calculating sensuality, an astuteness of stratagem, an utter contempt of truth, and a general apt.i.tude for making fools of men, that poor Philip the Regent would have wors.h.i.+ped. When she had no one better to corrupt, I have seen her take in hand an older, sadder, wiser, uglier man than myself, and in three days bring him to the verge of insanity, so that he would scowl at his wife, his companion for forty years, the blameless mother of six grown-up children, with a hideous expression indicative of carving-knives and strychnine. Guy suits her best. His thews and sinews awe her a little sometimes; and he has a certain hardness of character and pitilessness of purpose, improved by my instructions, which will carry him far, but not far enough, I think. You're right not to look flattered” (Guy's face had moved no more than the marble Memnon's); ”you are only a shade better than the rest. Our effete world is not worthy of that rare creature: she was born a century too late.”
”I quite differ with you,” Bruce said, in his harshest voice; ”I am certain the great plurality of the women of our day would resist any temptation, from fear of the consequences, if not from principle.”
Fancy the feelings of the Greek professor interrupted in his lecture by a controverting freshman, and you will have some idea of Fallowfield's.
His eye lighted on the last speaker, glittering like a hooded snake's, as it were caressing him with a lambent scorn.
I never guessed how much sneering provocation could reside in tones usually so very soft and musical till I heard him answer, ”I suppose you _do_ differ with me. We probably both speak from experience. On one point you are scarcely practical, though. You think you can frighten a woman into propriety. Try it.”
”Are you not too general in your strictures or encomiums?” I suggested, wis.h.i.+ng to relieve the awkwardness which ensued; ”surely there are many instances to the contrary. Take Lady Clanronald, for instance, married to a man her elder by twenty years, and not very clever or agreeable, I should think. No one ever breathed a whisper against her, and it has not been through default of aspirants.”
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