Part 71 (1/2)
”Write to me, brother,--write to me; and do not, do not be friends with this man, who took you to that wicked, wicked place.”
”Oh, Helen, I go from you strong enough to brave worse dangers than that,” said Leonard, almost gayly.
They kissed each other at the little wicket gate, and parted.
Leonard walked home under the summer moonlight, and on entering his chamber looked first at his rose-tree. The leaves of yesterday's flowers lay strewn around it; but the tree had put forth new buds.
”Nature ever restores,” said the young man. He paused a moment, and added, ”Is it that Nature is very patient?” His sleep that night was not broken by the fearful dreams he had lately known. He rose refreshed, and went his way to his day's work,--not stealing along the less crowded paths, but with a firm step, through the throng of men. Be bold, adventurer,--thou hast more to suffer! Wilt thou sink? I look into thy heart, and I cannot answer.
BOOK SEVENTH.
INITIAL CHAPTER.
MR. CAXTON UPON COURAGE AND PATIENCE.
”What is courage?” said my uncle Roland, rousing himself from a revery into which he had fallen, after the Sixth Book in this history had been read to our family circle.
”What is courage?” he repeated more earnestly. ”Is it insensibility to fear? That may be the mere accident of const.i.tution; and if so, there is no more merit in being courageous than in being this table.”
”I am very glad to hear you speak thus,” observed Mr. Caxton, ”for I should not like to consider myself a coward; yet I am very sensible to fear in all dangers, bodily and moral.”
”La, Austin, how can you say so?” cried my mother, firing up; ”was it not only last week that you faced the great bull that was rus.h.i.+ng after Blanche and the children?”
Blanche at that recollection stole to my father's chair, and, hanging over his shoulder, kissed his forehead.
MR. CAXTON (sublimely unmoved by these flatteries).--”I don't deny that I faced the bull, but I a.s.sert that I was horribly frightened.”
ROLAND.--”The sense of honour which conquers fear is the true courage of chivalry: you could not run away when others were looking on,--no gentleman could.”
MR. CAXTON.--”Fiddledee! It was not on my gentility that I stood, Captain. I should have run fast enough, if it had done any good. I stood upon my understanding. As the bull could run faster than I could, the only chance of escape was to make the brute as frightened as myself.”
BLANCHE.--”Ah, you did not think of that; your only thought was to save me and the children.”
MR. CAXTON.--”Possibly, my dear, very possibly, I might have been afraid for you too; but I was very much afraid for myself. However, luckily I had the umbrella, and I sprang it up and spread it forth in the animal's stupid eyes, hurling at him simultaneously the biggest lines I could think of in the First Chorus of the 'Seven against Thebes.' I began with ELEDEMNAS PEDIOPLOKTUPOS; and when I came to the grand howl of [A line in Greek], the beast stood appalled as at the roar of a lion. I shall never forget his amazed snort at the Greek. Then he kicked up his hind legs, and went bolt through the gap in the hedge. Thus, armed with AEschylus and the umbrella, I remained master of the field; but”
(continued Mr. Caxton ingenuously) ”I should not like to go through that half-minute again.”
”No man would,” said the captain, kindly. ”I should be very sorry to face a bull myself, even with a bigger umbrella than yours, and even though I had AEschylus, and Homer to boot, at my fingers' ends.”
MR. CAXTON.--”You would not have minded if it had been a Frenchman with a sword in his hand?”
CAPTAIN.--”Of course not. Rather liked it than otherwise,” he added grimly.
MR. CAXTON.--”Yet many a Spanish matador, who does n't care a b.u.t.ton for a bull, would take to his heels at the first lunge en carte from a Frenchman. Therefore, in fact, if courage be a matter of const.i.tution, it is also a matter of custom. We face calmly the dangers we are habituated to, and recoil from those of which we have no familiar experience. I doubt if Marshal Turenue himself would have been quite at his ease on the tight-rope; and a rope-dancer, who seems disposed to scale the heavens with t.i.tanic temerity, might possibly object to charge on a cannon.”
CAPTAIN ROLAND.--”Still, either this is not the courage I mean, or it is another kind of it. I mean by courage that which is the especial force and dignity of the human character, without which there is no reliance on principle, no constancy in virtue,--a something,” continued my uncle, gallantly, and with a half bow towards my mother, ”which your s.e.x shares with our own. When the lover, for instance, clasps the hand of his betrothed, and says, 'Wilt thou be true to me, in spite of absence and time, in spite of hazard and fortune, though my foes malign me, though thy friends may dissuade thee, and our lot in life may be rough and rude?' and when the betrothed answers, 'I will be true,' does not the lover trust to her courage as well as her love?”