THE MAJOR AND VAVASOR.
As major Marvel, for all the rebuffs he had met with, had not yet
learned to entertain the smallest doubt as to his personal
acceptability, so he was on his part most catholic in his receptivity.
But there were persons whom from the first glance he disliked, and then
his dislike was little short of loathing. I suspect they were such as
found the heel of his all but invulnerable vanity and wounded it. Not
accustomed to be hurt, it resented hurt when it came the more sorely. He
was in one sense, and that not a slight one, a true man: there was no
discrepancy, no unfittingness between his mental conditions and the
clothing in which those conditions presented themselves to others. His
words, looks, manners, tones, and everything that goes to express man to
man, expressed him. What he felt that he showed. I almost think he was
unaware of the possibility of doing otherwise. At the same time, he had
very little insight into the feelings of others, and almost no sense of
the possibility that the things he was saying might affect his listeners
otherwise than they affected him. If he boasted, he meant to boast, and
would scorn to look as if he did not know it was a good thing he was
telling of himself: why not of himself as well as of another? He had no
very ready sympathy with other people, especially in any suffering he
had never himself experienced, but he was scrupulously fair in what he
said or did in regard of them, and nothing was so ready to make him
angry as any appearance of injustice or show of deception. He would have
said that a man's first business was to take care of himself, as so many
think who have not the courage to say it; and so many more who do not
think it. But the Major's conduct went far to cast contempt upon his
selfish opinion.
During dinner he took the greater part of the conversation upon himself,
and evidently expected to be listened to. But that was nearly all he
wanted. Let him talk, and hear you laugh when he was funny, and he was
satisfied. He seemed to have no inordinate desire for admiration or even
for approbation. He was fond of telling tales of adventure, some
wonderful, some absurd, some having nothing in them but his own
presence, and occasionally, while the detail was good the point for the
sake of which it had been introduced would be missing; but he was just
as willing to tell one, the joke of which turned against himself, as one
amusing at the expense of another. Like many of his day who had spent
their freshest years in India, he was full of the amusements and sports
with which so much otherwise idle time is passed by Englishmen in the
East, and seemed to think nothing connected with the habits of their
countrymen there could fail to interest those at home. Every now and
then throughout the dinner he would say, "Oh, that reminds me!" and then
he would tell something that happened when he was at such and such a
place, when So-and-So "of our regiment" was out tiger-shooting, or
pig-sticking, or whatever the sport might be; "and if Mr. Raymount will
take a glass of wine with me, I will tell him the story"--for he was
constantly drinking wine, after the old fashion, with this or that one
of the company.
When he and Vavasor were introduced to each other, he glanced at him,
drew his eyebrows together, made his military bow, and included him
among the listeners to his tales of exploit and adventure by sea and
land.
Vavasor was annoyed at his presence--not that he much minded a little
boring in such good company, or forgot that everything against another
man was so much in his own favor; but he could not help thinking, "What
would my aunt say to such a relative?" So while he retained the blandest
expression, and was ready to drink as many glasses of wine with the new
comer as he wished, he set him down in his own mind not only as an
ill-bred man and a boaster, in which there was some truth, but as a liar
and a vulgar-minded man as well, in which there was little or no truth.
Now although major Marvel had not much ordinary insight into character,
the defect arose mainly from his not feeling a deep enough interest in
his neighbor; and if his suspicion or dislike was roused in respect of
one, he was just as likely as any other ever is to arrive at a correct
judgment concerning a man he does not love.
He had been relating a thrilling adventure with a man-eating tiger. He
saw, as they listened, the eyes of little Mark and Saffy had almost
surpassed the use of eyes and become ears as well. He saw Hester also,
who was still child enough to prefer a story of adventure to a love-tale
fixed as if, but for the way it was bound over to sobriety, her hair
would have stood on end. But at one moment he caught also--surprised
indeed a certain expression on the face of Vavasor, which that
experienced man of the world never certainly intended to be so
surprised, only at the moment he was annoyed to see the absorption of
Hester's listening; she seemed to have eyes for no one but the man who
shot tigers as Vavasor would have shot grouse.
The major, who upon fitting occasion and good cause, was quarrelsome as
any turkey-cock, swallowed something that was neither good, nor good for
food, and said, but not quite so carelessly as he had intended:
"Ha, ha, I see by your eyes, Mr. Passover, you think I'm drawing the
long bow--drawing the arrow to the head, eh?"
"No, 'pon my word!" said Vavasor earnestly, "nothing farther from
my thoughts. I was only admiring the coolness of the man who would
actually creep into the mouth of the--the--the jungle after
a--what-you-call-him--a man-eating tiger."
"Well, you see, what was a fellow to do," returned the major
suspiciously. "The fellow wouldn't come out! and by Jove I wasn't the
only fellow that wanted him out! Besides I didn't creep in; I only
looked in to see whether he was really there. That I could tell by the
shining eyes of him."
"But is not a man-eating tiger a something tremendous, you know? When he
once takes to that kind of diet, don't you know--they say he likes
nothing else half so well! Good beef and mutton will no longer serve his
turn, I've been told at the club. A man must be a very Munchausen to
venture it."
"I don't know the gentleman--never heard of him," said the major: for
Vavasor had pronounced the name German-fashion, and none of the
listeners recognized that of the king of liars; "but you are quite
mistaken in the character of the man-eating tiger. It is true he does
not care for other food after once getting a passion for the more
delicate; but it does not follow that the indulgence increases either
his courage or his fierceness. The fact is it ruins his moral nature. He
does not get many Englishmen to eat; and it would seem as if the flesh
of women and children and poor cowardly natives, he devours, took its
revenge upon him by undermining and destroying his natural courage. The
fact is, he is well-known for a sneak. I sometimes can't help thinking
the ruffian knows he is a rebel against the law of his Maker, and a
traitor to his natural master. The man-eating tiger and the
rogue-elephant are the devils of their kind. The others leave you alone
except you attack them; then they show fight. These attack you--but
run--at least the tiger, not the elephant, when you go out after him.
From the top of your elephant you may catch sight of him sneaking off
with his tail tucked between his legs from cover to cover of the jungle,
while they are beating up his quarters to drive him out. You can never
get any sport out of him. _He_ will never fly at your elephant, or
climb a tree, or take to the water after you! If there's a creature on
earth I hate it's a coward!" concluded the major.
Said Vavasor to himself, "The man is a coward!"
"But _why_ should you hate a coward so?" asked Hester, feeling at
the moment, with the vision of a man-eating tiger before her, that she
must herself come under the category. "How can a poor creature made
without courage help being one? You can neither learn nor buy courage!"
"I am not so sure about the learning. But such as you mean, I wouldn't
call cowards," returned the major. "Nobody thinks worse of the hare, or
even the fox, for going away before the hounds. Men whose business it is
to fight go away before the enemy when they have not a chance, and when
it would do no good to stand and be cut down. To let yourself be killed
when you ought not is to give up fighting. There is a time to run and a
time to stand. But the man will run like a man and the coward like a
coward."
Said Vavasor to himself, "I'll be bound you know when to run at least!"
"What can harmless creatures do but run," resumed the major, filling his
glass with old port. "But when the wretch that has done all the hurt he
could will not show fight for it, but turns tail the moment danger
appears, I call him a contemptible coward. Man or beast I would set my
foot on him. That's what made me go into the hole to look after the
brute."
"But he might have killed you, though he was a coward," said Hester,
"when you did not leave him room to run."
"Of course he might, my dear! Where else would be the fun of it? Without
that the thing would be no better than this shooting of pigeons and
pheasants by men who would drop their guns if a cock were to fly in
their faces. You _had_ to kill him, you know! He's first cousin--the
man-eating, or rather woman-eating tiger, to a sort that I understand
abounds in the Zoological Gardens called English society; if the woman
be poor, he devours her at once; if she be rich he marries her, and eats
her slowly up at his ease in his den."
"How with the black wife!" thought Mr. Raymount, who had been little
more than listening.
But Mr. Raymount did not really know anything about that part of his old
friend's history; it was hardly to his discredit. The black wife, as he
called her, was the daughter of an English merchant by a Hindoo wife, a
young creature when he first made her acquaintance, unaware of her own
power, and kept almost in slavery by the relatives of her deceased
father, who had left her all his property. Major Marvel made her
acquaintance and became interested in her through a devilish attempt to
lay the death of her father to her door. I believe the shine of her gold
had actually blinded her relatives into imagining, I can hardly say
_believing_ her guilty. The major had taken her part and been of
the greatest service to her. She was entirely acquitted. But although
nobody believed her in the smallest degree guilty, _society_ looked
askance upon her. True, she was rich, but was she not black? and had she
not been accused of a crime? And who saw her father and mother married?
Then said the major to himself--"Here am I a useless old fellow, living
for nobody but myself! It would make one life at least happier if I took
the poor thing home with me. She's rather too old, and I'm rather too
young to adopt her; but I daresay she would marry me. She has a trifle I
believe that would eke out my pay, and help us to live decently!" He did
not know then that she had more than a very moderate income, but it
turned out to be a very large fortune indeed when he came to inquire
into things. That the major rejoiced over his fortune, I do not doubt;
but that he would have been other than an honorable husband had he found
she had nothing, I entirely disbelieve. When she left him the widowed
father of a little girl, he mourned sincerely for her. When the child
followed her mother, he was for some time a sad man indeed. Then, as if
her money was all he had left of her, and he must lead what was left of
his life in its company, he went heartily into speculation with it, and
at least doubled the fortune she brought him. He had now returned to his
country to find almost every one of his old friends dead, or so changed
as to make them all but dead to him. Little as any one would have
imagined it from his conversation or manner, it was with a kind of
heart-despair that he sought the cousin he had loved. And scarcely had
he more than seen the daughter of his old love than, in the absence of
almost all other personal interest, he was immediately taken possession
of by her--saw at once that she was a grand sort of creature, gracious
as grand, and different from anything he had even seen before. At the
same time he unconsciously began to claim a property in her; to have
loved the mother seemed to give him a right in the daughter, and that
right there might be a way of making good. But all this was as yet only
in the region of the feeling, not at all in that of the thinking.
In proportion as he was taken with the daughter of the house, he
disliked the look of the fine gentleman visitor that seemed to be
dangling after her. Who he was, or in what capacity there, he did not
know, but almost from the first sight profoundly disliked him, and the
more as he saw more sign of his admiration of Hester. He might be a
woman-eater, and after her money--if she had any: such suspects must be
watched and followed, and their haunts marked.
"But," said Hester, fearing the conversation might here take a dangerous
turn, "I should like to understand the thing a little better. I am not
willing to set myself down as a coward; I do not see that a woman has
any right to be a coward any more than a man. Tell me, major
Marvel--when you know that a beast may have you down, and begin eating
you any moment, what is it that keeps you up? What have you to fall back
upon? Is it principle, or faith, or what is it?"
"Ho, ho!" said the Major, laughing, "a meta-physician in the very bosom
of my family!--I had not reckoned upon that!--Well, no, my dear, I
cannot exactly say that it is principle, and I am sure it is not faith.
You don't think about it at all. It's partly your elephant, and partly
your rifle--and partly perhaps--well, there I daresay comes in something
of principle!--that as an Englishman you are sent to that benighted
quarter of the world to kill their big vermin for them, poor things! But
no, you don't think of that at the time. You've got to kill him--that's
it. And then when he comes roaring on, your rifle jumps to your shoulder
of itself."
"Do you make up your mind beforehand that if the animal should kill you,
it is all right?" asked Hester.
"By no means, I give you my word of honor," answered the major,
laughing.
"Well now," answered Hester, "except I had made up my mind that if I was
killed it was all right, I couldn't meet the tiger."
"But you see, my dear," said the major, "you do not know what it is to
have confidence in your eye and your rifle. It is a form of power that
you soon come to feel as resting in yourself--a power to destroy the
thing that opposes you!"
Hester fell a-thinking, and the talk went on without her. She never
heard the end of the story, but was roused by the laughter that followed
it.
"It was no tiger at all--that was the joke of the thing," said the
major. "There was a roar of laughter when the brute--a great lumbering
floundering hyena, rushed into the daylight. But the barrel of my rifle
was bitten together as a schoolboy does a pen--a quill-pen, I mean. They
have horribly powerful jaws, those hyenas."
"And what became of the man-eater?" asked Mark, with a disappointed
look.
"Stopped in the hole till it was safe to come out and go on with his
delicate meals."
"Just imagine that horrible growl behind you, as if it came out of a
whole mine of teeth inside!"
"By George! for a young lady," said the major, "you have an imagination!
Too much of that, you know, won't go to make you a good hunter of
tigers!"
"Then you owe your coolness to want of imagination?" suggested Hester.
"Perhaps so. Perhaps, after all," returned the major, with a merry
twinkle in his eye, "we hunters are but a set of stupid fellows--too
stupid to be reasonably frightened!"
"I don't mean that exactly. I think that perhaps you do not know so well
as you might where your courage comes from. For my part I would rather
be courageous to help the good than to destroy the bad."
"Ah, but we're not all good enough ourselves for that," said the major,
with a serious expression, and looking at her full out of his clear
eyes, from which their habitual twinkle of fun had for the moment
vanished. "Some of us are only fit to destroy what is yet worse than
ourselves."
"To be sure we can't _make_ anything," said Hester thoughtfully,
"but we can help God to make. To destroy evil things is good, but the
worst things can only be destroyed by being good, and that is so hard!"
"It _is_ hard," said the major--"so hard that most people never try
it!" he added with a sigh, and a gulp of his wine.
Mrs. Raymount rose, and with Hester and the children withdrew. After
they were gone the major rattled on again, his host putting in a word
now and then, and Vavasor sat silent, with an expression that seemed to
say, "I am amused, but I don't eat all that is put on my plate."