Aid me, O ye Nine! whom the incomparable Persius satirized his
contemporaries for invoking, and then, all of a sudden, invoked on his
own behalf--aid me to describe that famous battle by the stocks, and in
defence of the stocks, which was waged by the two representatives of
Saxon and Norman England. Here, sober support of law and duty and
delegated trust--_pro aris et focis_; there, haughty invasion, and
bellicose spirit of knighthood, and that respect for name and person,
which we call honor. Here, too, hardy physical force--there, skilful
discipline. Here----the Nine are as deaf as a post, and as cold as a
stone! Plague take the jades!--I can do better without them.
Randal was a year older than Lenny, but he was not so tall nor so
strong, nor even so active; and after the first blind rush, when the two
boys paused, and drew back to breathe, Lenny, eyeing the slight form and
hueless cheek of his opponent, and seeing blood trickling from Randal's
lip, was seized with an instantaneous and generous remorse. "It was not
fair," he thought, "to fight one whom he could beat so easily." So,
retreating still farther, and letting his arms fall to his side, he said
mildly--"There, let's have no more of it; but go home, and be good."
Randal Leslie had no remarkable degree of that constitutional quality
called physical courage; but he had all those moral qualities which
supply its place. He was proud--he was vindictive--he had high
self-esteem--he had the destructive organ more than the combative;--what
had once provoked his wrath it became his instinct to sweep away.
Therefore, though all his nerves were quivering, and hot tears were in
his eyes, he approached Lenny with the sternness of a gladiator, and
said between his teeth, which he set hard, choking back the sob of rage
and pain--
"You have struck me--and you shall not stir from this ground--till I
have made you repent it. Put up your hands--I will not strike you
so--defend yourself."
Lenny mechanically obeyed; and he had good need of the admonition; for
if before he had had the advantage, now that Randal had recovered the
surprise to his nerves, the battle was not to the strong.
Though Leslie had not been a fighting boy at Eton, still his temper had
involved him in some conflicts when he was in the lower forms, and he
had learned something of the art as well as the practice in pugilism--an
excellent thing, too, I am barbarous enough to believe, and which I hope
will never quite die out of our public schools. Ah, many a young duke
has been a better fellow for life from a fair set-to with a trader's
son; and many a trader's son has learned to look a lord more manfully in
the face on the hustings, from the recollection of the sound thrashing
he once gave to some little Lord Leopold Dawdle.
So Randal now brought his experience and art to bear; put aside those
heavy roundabout blows, and darted in his own, quick and
sharp--supplying the due momentum of pugilistic mechanics to the natural
feebleness of his arm. Ay, and the arm, too, was no longer so feeble: so
strange is the strength that comes from passion and pluck!
Poor Lenny, who had never fought before, was bewildered; his sensations
grew so entangled that he could never recall them distinctly: he had a
dim reminiscence of some breathless impotent rush--of a sudden blindness
followed by quick flashes of intolerable light--of a deadly faintness,
from which he was roused by sharp pangs--here--there--everywhere; and
then all he could remember was, that he was lying on the ground, huddled
up and panting hard, while his adversary bent over him with a
countenance as dark and livid as Lara himself might have bent over the
fallen Otho. For Randal Leslie was not one who, by impulse and nature,
subscribed to the noble English maxim--"Never hit a foe when he is
down;" and it cost him a strong if brief self-struggle, not to set his
heel on that prostrate form. It was the mind, not the heart that subdued
the savage within him, as, muttering something inwardly--certainly not
Christian forgiveness--the victor turned gloomily away.