OPINION, MALE AND FEMALE
The fine young parsons of the present generation are too fond of asking
us why we come to church, and assigning fifty reasons out of their own
heads, not one of which is to our credit or theirs; whereas their proper
business is to cure the fish they have caught, instead of asking how
they caught them. Mr. Twemlow had sense enough for this, and treated the
largest congregation he had ever preached to as if they were come for
the good of their souls, and should have it, in spite of Lord Nelson.
But, alas! their bodies fared not so well, and scarcely a man got his
Sunday dinner according to his liking. Never a woman would stay by the
fire for the sake of a ten-pound leg of mutton, and the baker put his
shutters up at half past ten against every veal pie and every loin
of pork. Because in the church there would be seen this day (as the
servants at the Hall told every one) the man whom no Englishman could
behold without pride, and no Frenchman with it--the victor of the Nile,
and of Copenhagen, and countless other conflicts. Knowing that he would
be stared at well, he was equal to the occasion, and the people who saw
him were so proud of the sight that they would talk of it now if they
were alive.
But those who were not there would exhibit more confidence than
conscience by describing every item of his raiment, which verily even
of those who beheld it none could do well, except a tailor or a woman.
Enough that he shone in the light of the sun (which came through a
windowful of bull's-eyes upon him, and was surprised to see stars by
daylight), but the glint of his jewels and glow of his gold diverted no
eye from the calm, sad face which in the day of battle could outflash
them all. That sensitive, mild, complaisant face (humble, and even
homely now, with scathe and scald and the lines of middle age) presented
itself as a great surprise to the many who came to gaze at it. With
its child-like simplicity and latent fire, it was rather the face of a
dreamer and poet than of a warrior and hero.
Mrs. Cheeseman, the wife of Mr. Cheeseman, who kept the main shop in
the village, put this conclusion into better English, when Mrs. Shanks
(Harry's mother) came on Monday to buy a rasher and compare opinions.
“If I could have fetched it to my mind,” she said, “that Squire Darling
were a tarradiddle, and all his wenches liars--which some of them be,
and no mistake--and if I could refuse my own eyes about gold-lace, and
crown jewels, and arms off, happier would I sleep in my bed, ma'am,
every night the Lord seeth good for it. I would sooner have found
hoppers in the best ham in the shop than have gone to church so to
delude myself. But there! that Cheeseman would make me do it. I did
believe as we had somebody fit to do battle for us against Boney, and I
laughed about all they invasion and scares. But now--why, 'a can't say
bo to a goose! If 'a was to come and stand this moment where you be
a-standing, and say, 'Mrs. Cheeseman, I want a fine rasher,' not a bit
of gristle would I trim out, nor put it up in paper for him, as I do for
you, ma'am.”
And Widow Shanks quite agreed with her.
“Never can I tell you what my feelings was, when I seed him a-standing
by the monument, ma'am. But I said to myself--'why, my poor John, as is
now in heaven, poor fellow, would 'a took you up with one hand, my lord,
stars and garters and crowns and all, and put you into his sow-west
pocket.' And so he could have done, Mrs. Cheeseman.”
But the opinion of the men was different, because they knew a bee from a
bull's foot.
“He may not be so very big,” they said, “nor so outrageous thunderin',
as the missus looked out for from what she have read. They always goes
by their own opinions, and wrong a score of times out of twenty. But any
one with a fork to his leg can see the sort of stuff he is made of. He
'tended his duty in the house of the Lord, and he wouldn't look after
the women; but he kept his live eye upon every young chap as were fit
for a man-of-war's-man--Dan Tugwell especial, and young Harry Shanks.
You see if he don't have both of they afore ever the war comes on
again!”
Conscious of filling the public eye, with the privilege of being upon
private view, Lord Nelson had faced the position without flinching, and
drawn all the fire of the enemy. After that he began to make reprisals,
according to his manner, taking no trouble to regard the women--which
debarred them from thinking much of him--but settling with a steady
gaze at each sea-faring man, whether he was made of good stuff or of
pie-crust. And to the credit of the place it must be said that he found
very little of that soft material, but plenty of good stuff, slow,
perhaps, and heavy, but needing only such a soul as his to rouse it.
“What a fine set of fellows you have in your village!” he said to Miss
Darling after dinner, as she sat at the head of her father's table,
for the Admiral had long been a widower. “The finest I have seen on
the south coast anywhere. And they look as if they had been under some
training. I suppose your father had most of them in the Fencibles, last
summer?”
“Not one of them,” Faith answered, with a sweet smile of pride. “They
have their own opinions, and nothing will disturb them. Nobody could get
them to believe for a moment that there was any danger of invasion. And
they carried on all their fishing business almost as calmly as they do
now. For that, of course, they may thank you, Lord Nelson; but they have
not the smallest sense of the obligation.”
“I am used to that, as your father knows; but more among the noble than
the simple. For the best thing I ever did I got no praise, or at any
rate very little. As to the Boulogne affair, Springhaven was quite
right. There was never much danger of invasion. I only wish the villains
would have tried it. Horatia, would you like to see your godfather at
work? I hope not. Young ladies should be peaceful.”
“Then I am not peaceful at all,” cried Dolly, who was sitting by the
maimed side of her “Flapfin,” as her young brother Johnny had nicknamed
him. “Why, if there was always peace, what on earth would any but very
low people find to do? There could scarcely be an admiral, or a general,
or even a captain, or--well, a boy to beat the drums.”
“But no drum would want to be beaten, Horatia,” her elder sister Faith
replied, with the superior mind of twenty-one; “and the admirals and the
generals would have to be--”
“Doctors, or clergymen, or something of that sort, or perhaps even
worse--nasty lawyers.” Then Dolly (whose name was “Horatia” only
in presence of her great godfather) blushed, as befitted the age of
seventeen, at her daring, and looked at her father.
“That last cut was meant for me,” Frank Darling, the eldest of the
family, explained from the opposite side of the table. “Your lordship,
though so well known to us, can hardly be expected to know or remember
all the little particulars of our race. We are four, as you know; and
the elder two are peaceful, while the younger pair are warlike. And I
am to be the 'nasty lawyer,' called to the bar in the fullness of
time--which means after dining sufficiently--to the great disgust of
your little godchild, whose desire from her babyhood has been to get me
shot.”
“LITTLE, indeed! What a word to use about me! You told a great story.
But now you'll make it true.”
“To wit--as we say at Lincoln's Inn--she has not longed always for my
death in battle, but henceforth will do so; but I never shall afford
her that gratification. I shall keep out of danger as zealously as your
lordship rushes into it.”
“Franky going on, I suppose, with some of his usual nonsense,” Admiral
Darling, who was rather deaf, called out from the bottom of the table.
“Nobody pays much attention to him, because he does not mean a word of
it. He belongs to the peace--peace--peace-at-any-price lot. But when a
man wanted to rob him last winter, he knocked him down, and took him by
the throat, and very nearly killed him.”
“That's the only game to play,” exclaimed Lord Nelson, who had been
looking at Frank Darling with undisguised disgust. “My young friend, you
are not such a fool after all. And why should you try to be one?”
“My brother,” said the sweet-tempered Faith, “never tries to be a fool,
Lord Nelson; he only tries to be a poet.”
This made people laugh; and Nelson, feeling that he had been rude to a
youth who could not fairly answer him, jumped from his chair with the
lightness of a boy, and went round to Frank Darling, with his thin
figure leaning forward, and his gray unpowdered hair tossed about, and
upon his wrinkled face that smile which none could ever resist, because
it was so warm and yet so sad.
“Shake hands, my dear young friend,” he cried, “though I can not offer
the right one. I was wrong to call you a fool because you don't look at
things as I do. Poets are almost as good as sailors, and a great deal
better than soldiers. I have felt a gift that way myself, and turned out
some very tidy lines. But I believe they were mainly about myself, and I
never had time to go on with them.”
Such little touches of simplicity and kindness, from a man who never
knew the fear of men, helped largely to produce that love of Nelson
which England felt, and will always feel.
“My lord,” replied the young man, bending low--for he was half a cubit
higher than the mighty captain--“it is good for the world that you have
no right arm, when you disarm it so with your left one.”