We walked up the garden, I in the middle. Carrie received an occasional
bow, but we didn’t know many people there. This was young Bassishaw’s
excuse for conducting us personally, and he pointed out various people
as “men you ought to know, you know, Butterfield.” I betrayed no great
desire for the acquaintanceship. I was not to be shaken off.
Bassishaw was piloting us into the most frequented parts. This young man
was manœuvring, with more skill than I had given him credit for, to drop
me. Carrie had my arm, and as Bassishaw stopped at the various groups I
made surer of it by a little closing in of my elbow. He had the
advantage of a tactician’s knowledge, but I had the larger experience.
He led us towards the base of operations, the refreshment tent, where he
calculated to play on the natural interest I should take in the
commissariat department. He gave me a hint of a private canteen--it was
good strategy, I was very thirsty--but I held out. He showed a great
desire to introduce me to personages, but I replied to his big guns with
a harassing fire of conversational small-arms. He really did very well,
and my respect for him increased. Personal strategy was his line, but I
held him in the field of mental manœuvres.
He had pointed out some snowy-whiskered old general, and had held forth
in his redundant way on the fascinating personality of the man. I made
him a text for an army discourse.
“Do you know, Bassishaw,” I said, “I cannot sufficiently admire you
military men. You are the outposts of a nation, who make all that is
happy and peaceful at home possible. You sacrifice yourselves on
inaccessible Indian hills, you scorch under African suns, while all you
love is left behind you in England. You do not marry--that is, the true
soldier thinks it inconsistent with his duty,--and you leave all you
care for to fight the battles of a less devoted society. It is
self-sacrificing; and when you return, it is to a bachelor’s old age,
like the general there.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Butterfield,” he replied. “Lots of our soldiers
marry, you know.”