Nine days after his master’s departure, Daniel Skepsey, a man of some
renown of late, as a subject of reports and comments in the newspapers,
obtained a passport, for the identification, if need were, of his
missing or misapprehended person in a foreign country, of the language
of which three unpronounceable words were knocking about his head to
render the thought of the passport a staff of safety; and on the morning
that followed he was at speed through Normandy, to meet his master
rounding homeward from Paris, at a town not to be spoken as it is
written, by reason of the custom of the good people of the country, with
whom we would fain live on neighbourly terms:--yes, and they had proof
of it, not so very many years back, when they were enduring the worst
which can befall us--though Mr. Durance, to whom he was indebted for the
writing of the place of his destination large on a card, and the wording
of the French sound beside it, besides the jotting down of trains and
the station for the change of railways, Mr. Durance could say, that the
active form of our sympathy consisted in the pouring of cheeses upon
them when they were prostrate and unable to resist!
A kind gentleman, Mr. Durance, as Daniel Skepsey had recent cause to
know, but often exceedingly dark; not so patriotic as desireable, it
was to be feared; and yet, strangely indeed, Mr. Durance had said cogent
things on the art of boxing and on manly exercises, and he hoped--he
was emphatic in saying he hoped--we should be regenerated. He must have
meant, that boxing--on a grand scale would contribute to it. He said,
that a blow now and then was wholesome for us all. He recommended a
monthly private whipping for old gentlemen who decline the use of the
gloves, to disperse their humours; not excluding Judges and Magistrates:
he could hardly be in earnest. He spoke in a clergyman’s voice, and said
it would be payment of good assurance money, beneficial to their souls:
he seemed to mean it. He said, that old gentlemen were bottled vapours,
and it was good for them to uncork them periodically. He said, they
should be excused half the strokes if they danced nightly--they resented
motion. He seemed sadly wanting in veneration.
But he might not positively intend what he said. Skepsey could overlook
everything he said, except the girding at England. For where is a braver
people, notwithstanding appearances! Skepsey knew of dozens of gallant
bruisers, ready for the cry to strip to the belt; worthy, with a little
public encouragement, to rank beside their grandfathers of the Ring,
in the brilliant times when royalty and nobility countenanced the manly
art, our nursery of heroes, and there was not the existing unhappy
division of classes. He still trusted to convince Mr. Durance, by means
of argument and happy instances, historical and immediate, that the
English may justly consider themselves the elect of nations, for
reasons better than their accumulation of the piles of gold-better than
‘usurers’ reasons,’ as Mr. Durance called them. Much that Mr. Durance
had said at intervals was, although remembered almost to the letter of
the phrase, beyond his comprehension, and he put it aside, with penitent
blinking at his deficiency.
All the while, he was hearing a rattle of voluble tongues around him,
and a shout of stations, intelligible as a wash of pebbles, and blocks
in a torrent. Generally the men slouched when they were not running. At
Dieppe he had noticed muscular fellows; he admitted them to be nimbler
on the legs than ours; and that may count both ways, he consoled a
patriotic vanity by thinking; instantly rebuking the thought; for he
had read chapters of Military History. He sat eyeing the front row of
figures in his third-class carriage, musing on the kind of soldiers we
might, heaven designing it, have to face, and how to beat them; until
he gazed on Rouen, knowing by the size of it and by what Mr. Durance had
informed him of the city on the river, that it must be the very city
of Rouen, not so many years back a violated place, at the mercy of a
foreign foe. Strong pity laid hold of Skepsey. He fortified the heights
for defence, but saw at a glance that it was the city for modern
artillery to command, crush and enter. He lost idea of these afflicted
people as foes, merely complaining of their attacks on England, and
their menaces in their Journals and pamphlets; and he renounced certain
views of the country to be marched over on the road by this route to
Paris, for the dictation of terms of peace at the gates of the French
capital, sparing them the shameful entry; and this after the rout of
their attempt at an invasion of the Island!
A man opposite him was looking amicably on his lively grey eyes. Skepsey
handed a card from his pocket. The man perused it, and crying: ‘Dreux?’
waved out of the carriage-window at a westerly distance, naming Rouen
as not the place, not at all, totally other. Thus we are taught, that
a foreign General, ignorant of the language, must confine himself to
defensive operations at home; he would be a child in the hands of the
commonest man he meets. Brilliant with thanks in signs, Skepsey drew
from his friend a course of instruction in French names, for our
necessities on a line of march. The roads to Great Britain’s metropolis,
and the supplies of forage and provision at every stage of a march on
London, are marked in the military offices of these people; and that,
with their barking Journals, is a piece of knowledge to justify a
belligerent return for it. Only we pray to be let live peacefully.
Fervently we pray it when this good man, a total stranger to us,
conducts an ignorant foreigner from one station to another through the
streets of Rouen, after a short stoppage at the buffet and assistance in
the identification of coins; then, lifting his cap to us, retires.
And why be dealing wounds and death? It is a more blessed thing to keep
the Commandments. But how is it possible to keep the Commandments if you
have a vexatious wife?
Martha Skepsey had given him a son to show the hereditary energy in his
crying and coughing; and it was owing, he could plead, to her habits
and her tongue, that he sometimes, that he might avoid the doing of
worse--for she wanted correction and was improved by it--courted the
excitement of a short exhibition of skill, man to man, on publicans’
first floors. He could have told the magistrates so, in part apology for
the circumstances dragging him the other day, so recently, before his
Worship; and he might have told it, if he had not remembered Captain
Dartrey Fenellan’s words about treating women chivalrously which was
interpreted by Skepsey as correcting them, when called upon to do
it, but never exposing them only, if allowed to account for the
circumstances pushing us into the newspapers, we should not present so
guilty a look before the public.
Furthermore, as to how far it is the duty of a man to serve his master,
there is likewise question: whether is he, while receiving reproof
and punishment for excess of zeal in the service of his master, not to
mention the welfare of the country, morally--without establishing it as
a principle--exonerated? Miss Graves might be asked save that one would
not voluntarily trouble a lady on such subjects. But supposing, says the
opposing counsel, now at work in Skepsey’s conscience, supposing this
act, for which, contraveneing the law of the land, you are reproved and
punished, to be agreeable to you, how then? We answer, supposing it--and
we take uncomplainingly the magistrate’s reproof and punishment--morally
justified can it be expected of us to have the sense of guilt, although
we wear and know we wear a guilty look before the public?
His master and the dear ladies would hear of it; perhaps they knew of it
now; with them would rest the settlement of the distressing inquiry. The
ladies would be shocked ladies cannot bear any semblance of roughness,
not even with the gloves:--and knowing, as they must, that our practise
of the manly art is for their protection.
Skepsey’s grievous prospect of the hour to come under judgement of a sex
that was ever a riddle unread, clouded him on the approach to Dreux. He
studied the country and the people eagerly; he forbore to conduct great
military operations. Mr. Durance had spoken of big battles round about
the town of Dreux; also of a wonderful Mausoleum there, not equally
interesting. The little man was in deeper gloom than a day sobering on
crimson dusk when the train stopped and his quick ear caught the sound
of the station, as pronounced by his friend at Rouen.
He handed his card to the station-master. A glance, and the latter
signalled to a porter, saying: ‘Paradis’; and the porter laid hold of
Skepsey’s bag. Skepsey’s grasp was firm; he pulled, the porter pulled.
Skepsey heard explanatory speech accompanying a wrench. He wrenched back
with vigour, and in his own tongue exclaimed, that he held to the bag
because his master’s letters were in the bag, all the way from England.
For a minute, there was a downright trial of muscle and will: the porter
appeared furiously excited, Skepsey had a look of cooled steel. Then the
Frenchman, requiring to shrug, gave way to the Englishman’s eccentric
obstinacy, and signified that he was his guide. Quite so, and Skepsey
showed alacrity and confidence in following; he carried his bag. But
with the remembrance of the kindly serviceable man at Rouen, he sought
to convey to the porter, that the terms of their association were
cordial. A waving of the right hand to the heavens ratified the
treaty on the French side. Nods and smiles and gesticulations, with
across-Channel vocables, as it were Dover cliffs to Calais sands and
back, pleasantly beguiled the way down to the Hotel du Paradis, under
the Mausoleum heights, where Skepsey fumbled at his pocket for coin
current; but the Frenchman, all shaken by a tornado of negation, clapped
him on the shoulder, and sang him a quatrain. Skepsey had in politeness
to stand listening, and blinking, plunged in the contrition of
ignorance, eclipsed. He took it to signify something to the effect,
that money should not pass between friends. It was the amatory farewell
address of Henri IV. to his Charmante Gabrielle; and with
‘Perce de mille lords,
L’honneur m’appelle
Au champ de Mars,’
the Frenchman, in a backing of measured steps, apologized for his
enforced withdrawal from the stranger who had captured his heart.
Skepsey’s card was taken in the passage of the hotel. A clean-capped
maid, brave on the legs, like all he had seen of these people, preceded
him at quick march to an upper chamber. When he descended, bag in hand,
she flung open the salon-door of a table d’hote, where a goodly number
were dining and chattering; waiters drew him along to the section
occupied by his master’s party. A chair had been kept vacant for him;
his master waved a hand, his dear ladies graciously smiled; he struck
the bag in front of a guardian foot, growing happy. He could fancy they
had not seen the English newspapers. And his next observation of the
table showed him wrecked and lost: Miss Nesta’s face was the oval of
a woeful O at his wild behaviour in England during their absence. She
smiled. Skepsey had nevertheless to consume his food--excellent,
very tasty soup-with the sour sauce of the thought that he must be
tongue-tied in his defence for the time of the dinner.
‘No, dear Skips, please! you are to enjoy yourself,’ said Nesta.
He answered confusedly, trying to assure her that he was doing so, and
he choked.
His master had fixed his arrival for twenty minutes earlier. Skepsey
spoke through a cough of long delays at stations. The Rev. Septimus
Barmby, officially peacemaker, sounded the consequent excuse for a
belated comer. It was final; such is the power of sound. Looks were
cast from the French section of the table at the owner of the prodigious
organ. Some of the younger men, intent on the charms of Albion’s
daughters, expressed in a sign and a word or two alarm at what might be
beneath the flooring: and ‘Pas encore Lui!’ and ‘Son avant-courrier!’
and other flies of speech passed on a whiff, under politest of cover,
not to give offence. But prodigies, claim attention.
Our English, at the close of the dinner, consented to say it was good,
without specifying a dish, because a selection of this or that would
have seemed to italicize, and commit, them, in the presence of ladies,
to a notice of the matter of-course, beneath us, or the confession of
a low sensual enjoyment; until Lady Grace Halley named the particular
dressing of a tete de veau approvingly to Victor; and he stating, that
he had offered a suggestion for the menu of the day, Nataly exclaimed,
that she had suspected it: upon which Mr. Sowerby praised the menu,
Mr. Barmby, Peridon and Catkin named other dishes, there was the right
after-dinner ring in Victor’s ears, thanks to the woman of the world
who had travelled round to nature and led the shackled men to deliver
themselves heartily. One tap, and they are free. That is, in the moments
after dinner, when nature is at the gates with them. Only, it must be a
lady and a prevailing lady to give the tap. They need (our English) and
will for the ages of the process of their transformation need a queen.
Skepsey, bag in hand, obeyed the motion of his master’s head and
followed him.
He was presently back, to remain with the ladies during his master’s
perusal of letters. Nataly had decreed that he was not to be troubled;
so Nesta and mademoiselle besought him for a recital of his French
adventures; and strange to say, he had nothing to tell. The journey,
pregnant at the start, exciting in the course of it, was absolutely
blank at the termination. French people had been very kind; he could not
say more. But there was more; there was a remarkable fulness, if only
he could subordinate it to narrative. The little man did not know, that
time was wanted for imagination to make the roadway or riverway of a
true story, unless we press to invent; his mind had been too busy on
the way for him to clothe in speech his impressions of the passage
of incidents at the call for them. Things had happened, numbers of
interesting minor things, but they all slipped as water through the
fingers; and he being of the band of honest creatures who will
not accept a lift from fiction, drearily he sat before the ladies,
confessing to an emptiness he was far from feeling.
Nesta professed excessive disappointment. ‘Now, if it had been in
England, Skips!’ she said, under her mother’s gentle gloom of brows.
He made show of melancholy submission.
‘There, Skepsey, you have a good excuse, we are sure,’ Nataly said.
And women, when they are such ladies as these, are sent to prove to us
that they can be a blessing; instead of the dreadful cry to Providence
for the reason of the spread of the race of man by their means! He
declared his readiness, rejecting excuses, to state his case to them,
but for his fear of having it interpreted as an appeal for their
kind aid in obtaining his master’s forgiveness. Mr. Durance had very
considerately promised to intercede. Skepsey dropped a hint or two of
his naughty proceedings drily aware that their untutored antipathy to
the manly art would not permit of warmth.
Nesta said: ‘Do you know, Skips, we saw a grand exhibition of fencing in
Paris.’
He sighed. ‘Ladies can look on at fencing! foils and masks! Captain
Dartrey Fenellan has shown me, and says, the French are our masters at
it.’ He bowed constrainedly to mademoiselle.
‘You box, M. Skepsey!’ she said.
His melancholy increased: ‘Much discouragement from Government, Society!
If ladies... but I do not venture. They are not against Games. But
these are not a protection... to them, when needed; to the country.
The country seems asleep to its position. Mr. Durance has remarked on
it:--though I would not always quote Mr. Durance... indeed, he says,
that England has invested an Old Maid’s All in the Millennium, and is
ruined if it delays to come. “Old Maid,” I do not see. I do not--if
I may presume to speak of myself in the same breath with so clever
a gentleman, agree with Mr. Durance in everything. But the
chest-measurement of recruits, the stature of the men enlisted, prove
that we are losing the nursery of our soldiers.’
‘We are taking them out of the nursery, Skips, if you ‘re for quoting
Captain Dartrey,’ said Nesta. ‘We’ll never haul down our flag, though,
while we have him!’
‘Ah! Captain Dartrey!’ Skepsey was refreshed by the invocation of the
name.
A summons to his master’s presence cut short something he was beginning
to say about Captain Dartrey.