Part 11 (2/2)
”About you, you young long-legged cut-throat,” answered Crossthwaite, ”and all your crew of traitors.”
”Help, help, coomrades o' mine!” quoth the dragoon, bursting with laughter; ”I'm gaun be moorthered wi' a little booy that's gane mad, and toorned Chartist.”
I dragged Crossthwaite off; for what was jest to the soldiers, I saw, by his face, was fierce enough earnest to him. We walked on a little, in silence.
”Now,” I said, ”that was a good-natured fellow enough, though he was a soldier. You and he might have cracked many a joke together, if you did but understand each other;--and he was a countryman of yours, too.”
”I may crack something else besides jokes with him some day,” answered he, moodily.
”'Pon my word, you must take care how you do it. He is as big as four of us.”
”That vile aristocrat, the old Italian poet--what's his name?--Ariosto--ay!--he knew which quarter the wind was making for, when he said that fire-arms would be the end of all your old knights and gentlemen in armour, that hewed down unarmed innocents as if they had been sheep.
Gunpowder is your true leveller--dash physical strength! A boy's a man with a musket in his hand, my chap!”
”G.o.d forbid,” I said, ”that I should ever be made a man of in that way, or you either. I do not think we are quite big enough to make fighters; and if we were, what have we got to fight about?”
”Big enough to make fighters?” said he, half to himself; ”or strong enough, perhaps?--or clever enough?--and yet Alexander was a little man, and the Pet.i.t Caporal, and Nelson, and Caesar, too; and so was Saul of Tarsus, and weakly he was into the bargain. aesop was a dwarf, and so was Attila; Shakspeare was lame; Alfred, a rickety weakling; Byron, clubfooted;--so much for body _versus_ spirit--brute force _versus_ genius--genius.”
I looked at him; his eyes glared like two b.a.l.l.s of fire. Suddenly he turned to me.
”Locke, my boy, I've made an a.s.s of myself, and got into a rage, and broken a good old resolution of mine, and a promise that I made to my dear little woman--bless her! and said things to you that you ought to know nothing of for this long time; but those red-coats always put me beside myself. G.o.d forgive me!” And he held out his hand to me cordially.
”I can quite understand your feeling deeply on one point,” I said, as I took it, ”after the sad story you told me; but why so bitter on all? What is there so very wrong about things, that we must begin fighting about it?”
”Bless your heart, poor innocent! What is wrong?--what is not wrong? Wasn't there enough in that talk with Mackaye, that you told me of just now, to show anybody that, who can tell a hawk from a hand-saw?”
”Was it wrong in him to give himself such trouble about the education of a poor young fellow, who has no tie on him, who can never repay him?”
”No; that's just like him. He feels for the people, for he has been one of us. He worked in a printing-office himself many a year, and he knows the heart of the working man. But he didn't tell you the whole truth about education. He daren't tell you. No one who has money dare speak out his heart; not that he has much certainly; but the cunning old Scot that he is, he lives by the present system of things, and he won't speak ill of the bridge which carries him over--till the time comes.”
I could not understand whither all this tended, and walked on silent and somewhat angry, at hearing the least slight cast on Mackaye.
”Don't you see, stupid?” he broke out at last. ”What did he say to you about gentlemen being crammed by tutors and professors? Have not you as good a right to them as any gentleman?”
”But he told me they were no use--that every man must educate himself.”
”Oh! all very fine to tell you the grapes are sour, when you can't reach them. Bah, lad! Can't you see what comes of education?--that any dolt, provided he be a gentleman, can be doctored up at school and college, enough to make him play his part decently--his mighty part of ruling us, and riding over our heads, and picking our pockets, as parson, doctor, lawyer, member of parliament--while we--you now, for instance--cleverer than ninety-nine gentlemen out of a hundred, if you had one-tenth the trouble taken with you that is taken with every pig-headed son of an aristocrat--”
”Am I clever?” asked I, in honest surprise.
”What! haven't you found that out yet? Don't try to put that on me. Don't a girl know when she's pretty, without asking her neighbours?”
”Really, I never thought about it.”
”More simpleton you. Old Mackaye has, at all events; though, canny Scotchman that he is, he'll never say a word to you about it, yet he makes no secret of it to other people. I heard him the other day telling some of our friends that you were a thorough young genius.”
I blushed scarlet, between pleasure and a new feeling; was it ambition?
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