Skepseys main thought was upon war: the man had discoursed of pigs.
He informed the man of his having heard from a scholar, that pigs had been the cause of more bloody battles than any other animal.
How so? the pork-butcher asked, and said he was not much of a scholar, and pigs might be provoking, but he had not heard they were a cause of strife between man and man. For possession of them, Skepsey explained. Oh! possession! Why, weve heard of bloody battles for the possession of women! Men will fight for almost anything they care to get or call their own, the pork-butcher said; and he praised Old England for avoiding war. Skepsey nodded. How if war is forced on us? Then we fight. Suppose we are not prepared?We soon get that up. Skepsey requested him to state the degree of resistance he might think he could bring against a pair of skilful fists, in a place out of hearing of the police.
Say, you! said the pork-butcher, and sharply smiled, for he was a man of size.
I would give you two minutes, rejoined Skepsey, eyeing him intently and kindly: insomuch that it could be seen he was not in the conundrum vein.
Rather short allowance, eh, master? said the bigger man. Feel here; he straightened out his arm and doubled it, raising a proud bridge of muscle.
Skepsey performed the national homage to muscle.
Twice that, would not help without the science, he remarked, and let his arm be gripped in turn.
The pork-butchers throat sounded, as it were, commas and colons, punctuations in his reflections, while he tightened fingers along the iron lump. Stringy. Youre a wiry one, no mistake. It was encomium. With the ingrained contempt of size for a smallness that has not yet taught it the prostrating lesson, he said: Weight tells.
In a wrestle, Skepsey admitted. Allow me to say, you would not touch me.
And how do you know Im not a trifle handy with the maulers myself?
You will pardon me for saying, it would be worse for you if you were.
The pork-butcher was flung backward. Are you a Professor, may I inquire?
Skepsey rejected the title. I can engage to teach young men, upon a proper observance of first principles.
They be hanged! cried the ruffled pork-butcher. Our best men never got it out of books. Now, you tell meyouve got a spiflicating style of talk about youno brag, you tell mecourse, the best man wins, if you mean that: now, if I was one of em, and I fetches you a bit of a flick, how then? Would you be ready to step out with a real Professor?
I should claim a fair field, was the answer, made in modesty.
And youd expect to whop me with they there principles of yours?
I should expect to.
Bang me! was roared. After a stare at the mild little figure with the fitfully dead-levelled large grey eyes in front of him, the pork-butcher resumed: Take you for the man you say you be, youre just the man for my friend Jam and me. He dearly loves to see a set-to, self the same. What prettier? And if you would be so obliging some day as to favour us with a display, wed head a cap conformably, whether youd the best of it, according to your expectations, or t other way:For there never was shame in a jolly good licking as the song says: that is, if you take it and make it appear jolly good. And find you an opponent meet and fit, never doubt. Ever had the worse of an encounter, sir?
Often, Sir.
Well, thats good. And it didnt destroy your confidence?
Added to it, I hope.
At this point, it became a crying necessity for Skepsey to escape from an area of boastfulness, into which he had fallen inadvertently; and he hastened to apologize for his personal reference, that was intended for an illustration of our country caught unawares by a highly trained picked soldiery, inferior in numbers to the patriotic levies, but sharp at the edge and knowing how to strike. Measure the axe, measure the tree; and which goes down first?
Invasion, is it?and you mean, were not to hit back? the pork-butcher bellowed, and presently secured a murmured approbation from an audience of three, that had begun to comprehend the dialogue, and strengthened him in a manner to teach Skepsey the foolishness of ever urging analogies of too extended a circle to close sharply on the mark. He had no longer a chance, he was overborne, identified with the fated invader, rolled away into the chops of the Channel, to be swallowed up entire, and not a rag left of him, but John Bull tucking up his shirtsleeves on the shingle beach, ready for a second or a third; crying to them to come on.
Warmed by his Bullish victory, and friendly to the vanquished, the pork-butcher told Skepsey he should like to see more of him, and introduced himself on a card Benjamin Shaplow, not far from the Bank.
They parted at the Terminus, where three shrieks of an engine, sounding like merry messages of the damned to their congeners in the anticipatory stench of the cab-droppings above, disconnected sane hearing; perverted it, no doubt. Or else it was the stamp of a particular name on his mind, which impressed Skepsey, as he bored down the street and across the bridge, to fancy in recollection, that Mr. Shaplow, when reiterating the wish for self and friend to witness a display of his cunning with the fists, had spoken the name of Jarniman. An unusual name yet more than one Jarniman might well exist. And unlikely that a friend of the pork-butcher would be the person whom Mr. Radnor first prohibited and then desired to receive. It hardly mattered:considering that the Dutch Navy did really, incredible as it seems now, come sailing a good way up the River Thames, into the very main artery of Old England. And what thought the Tower of it? Skepsey looked at the Tower in sympathy, wondering whether the Tower had seen those impudent Dutch a nice people at home, he had heard. Mr. Shaplows Jarniman might actually be Mr. Radnors, he inclined to think. At any rate he was now sure of the name.
CHAPTER XI. WHEREIN WE BEHOLD THE COUPLE JUSTIFIED OF LOVE HAVING SIGHT OF THEIR SCOURGE
Fenellan, in a musing exclamation, that was quite spontaneous, had put a picture on the departing Skepsey, as observed from an end of the Lakelands upper terrace-walk.
Queer little water-wagtail it is! And Lady Grace Halley and Miss Graves and Mrs. Cormyn, snugly silken dry ones, were so taken with the pretty likeness after hearing Victor call the tripping dripping creature the happiest man in England, that they nursed it in their minds for a Bewick tailpiece to the chapter of a pleasant rural day. It imbedded the day in an idea that it had been rural.
We are indebted almost for construction to those who will define us briefly: we are but scattered leaves to the general comprehension of us until such a work of binding and labelling is done. And should the definition be not so correct as brevity pretends to make it at one stroke, we are at least rendered portable; thus we pass into the conceptions of our fellows, into the records, down to posterity. Anecdotes of Englands happiest man were related, outlines of his personal history requested. His nomination in chief among the traditionally very merry Islanders was hardly borne out by the tale of his enchainment with a drunken yokefellowunless upon the Durance version of the felicity of his countrymen; still, the water-wagtail carried it, Skepsey trotted into memories. Heroes conducted up Fames temple-steps by ceremonious historians, who are studious, when the platform is reached, of the art of setting them beneath the flambeau of a final image, before thrusting them inside to be rivetted on their pedestals, have an excellent chance of doing the same, let but the provident narrators direct that image to paint the thing a moth-like humanity desires, in the thing it shrinks from. Miss Priscilla Graves now fastened her meditations upon Skepsey; and it was important to him.
Tobacco withdrew the haunting shadow of the Rev. Septimus Barmby from Nesta. She strolled beside Louise de Seilles, to breathe sweet-sweet in the dear friends ear and tell her she loved her. The presence of the German had, without rousing animosity, damped the young Frenchwoman, even to a revulsion when her feelings had been touched by hearing praise of her France, and wounded by the subjects of the praise. She bore the national scar, which is barely skin-clothing of a gash that will not heal since her country was overthrown and dismembered. Colney Durance could excuse the unreasonableness in her, for it had a dignity, and she controlled it, and quietly suffered, trusting to the steady, tireless, concentrated aim of her France. In the Gallic mind of our time, France appears as a prematurely buried Glory, that heaves the mound oppressing breath and cannot cease; and calls hourly, at times keenly, to be remembered, rescued from the pain and the mould-spots of that foul sepulture. Mademoiselle and Colney were friends, partly divided by her speaking once of revanche; whereupon he assumed the chair of the Moralist, with its right to lecture, and went over to the enemy; his talk savoured of a German. Our holding of the balance, taking two sides, is incomprehensible to a people quivering with the double wound to body and soul. She was of Breton blood. Cymric enough was in Nesta to catch any thrill from her and join to her mood, if it hung out a colour sad or gay, and was noble, as any mood of this dear Louise would surely be.
Nataly was not so sympathetic. Only the Welsh and pure Irish are quick at the feelings of the Celtic French. Nataly came of a Yorkshire stock; she had the bravery, humaneness and generous temper of our civilized North, and a taste for mademoiselles fine breeding, with a distaste for the singular air of superiority in composure which it was granted to mademoiselle to wear with an unassailable reserve when the roughness of the commercial boor was obtrusive. She said of her to Colney, as they watched the couple strolling by the lake below: Nesta brings her out of her frosts. I suppose its the presence of Dr. Schlesien. I have known it the same after an evening of Wagners music.
Richard Wagner Germanized ridicule of the French when they were down, said Colney. She comes of a blood that never forgives.
Never forgives is horrible to think of! I fancied you liked your Kelts, as you call them.
Colney seized on a topic that shelved a less agreeable one that he saw coming. You English wont descend to understand what does not resemble you. The French are in a state of feverish patriotism. You refuse to treat them for a case of fever. They are lopped of a limb: you tell them to be at rest!
You know I am fond of them.
And the Kelts, as they are called, cant and wont forgive injuries; look at Ireland, look at Wales, and the Keltic Scot. Have you heard them talk? It happened in the year 1400: its alive to them as if it were yesterday. Old History is as dead to the English as their first father. They beg for the privilege of pulling the forelock to the bearers of the titles of the men who took their lands from them and turn them to the uses of cattle. The Saxon English had, no doubt, a heavier thrashing than any people allowed to subsist ever received: you see it to this day; the crick of the neck at the name of a lord is now concealed and denied, but they have it and betray the effects; and its patent in their Journals, all over their literature. Where its not seen, another bloods at work. The Kelt wont accept the form of slavery. Let him be servile, supple, cunning, treacherous, and to appearance time-serving, he will always remember his day of manly independence and who robbed him: he is the poetic animal of the races of modern men.
You give him Pagan colours.
Natural colours. He does not offer the other cheek or turn his back to be kicked after a knock to the ground. Instead of asking him to forgive, which he cannot do, you must teach him to admire. A mercantile community guided by Political Economy from the ledger to the banquet presided over by its Dagon Capital, finds that difficult. However, there s the secret of him; that I respect in him. His admiration of an enemy or oppressor doing great deeds, wins him entirely. He is an active spirit, not your negative passive letter-of-Scripture Insensible. And his faults, short of ferocity, are amusing.
But the fits of ferocity!
They are inconscient, real fits. They come of a hot nerve. He is manageable, sober too, when his mind is charged. As to the French people, they are the most mixed of any European nation; so they are packed with contrasts: they are full of sentiment, they are sharply logical; free-thinkers, devotees; affectionate, ferocious; frivolous, tenacious; the passion of the season operating like sun or moon on these qualities; and they can reach to ideality out of sensualism. Below your level, theyre above it: a paradox is at home with them!
My friend, you speak seriouslyan unusual compliment, Nataly said, and ungratefully continued: You know what is occupying me. I want your opinion. I guess it. I want to heara mean thirst perhaps, and you would pay me any number of compliments to avoid the subject; but let me hear:this house!
Colney shrugged in resignation. Victor works himself out, he replied.
We are to go through it all again?
If you have not the force to contain him.
How contain him?
Up went Colneys shoulders.
You may see it all before you, he said, straight as the Seine chaussee from the hill of La Roche Guyon.
He looked for her recollection of the scene.
Ah, the happy ramble that year! she cried. And my Nesta just seven. We had been six months at Craye. Every day of our life together looks happy to me, looking back, though I know that every day had the same troubles. I dont think Im deficient in courage; I think I could meet.... But the false position so cruelly weakens me. I am no womans equal when I have to receive or visit. It seems easier to meet the worst in life-danger, death, anything. Pardon me for talking so. Perhaps we need not have left Craye or Creckholt? she hinted an interrogation. Though I am not sorry; it is not good to be where one tastes poison. Here it may be as deadly, worse. Dear friend, I am so glad you remember La Roche Guyon. He was popular with the dear French people.
In spite of his accent.
It is not so bad?
And that youll defend!
Consider: these neighbours we come among; they may have heard
Act on the assumption.
You forget the principal character. Victor promises; he may have learnt a lesson at Creckholt. But look at this house he has built. How can Iany womancontain him! He must have society.
Paraitre!
He must be in the front. He has talked of Parliament.
Colneys liver took the thrust of a skewer through it. He spoke as in meditative encomium: His entry into Parliament would promote himself and family to a station of eminence naked over the Clock Tower of the House.
She moaned. At the vilest, I cannot regret my conductbear what I may. I can bear real pain: what kills me is, the suspicion. And I feel it like a guilty wretch! And I do not feel the guilt! I should do the same again, on reflection. I do believe it saved him. I do; oh! I do, I do. I cannot expect my family to see with my eyes. You know themmy brother and sisters think I have disgraced them; they put no value on my saving him. It sounds childish; it is true. He had fallen into a terrible black mood.
He had an hour of gloom.