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Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller - "On The Firing Line"

Harold Bell Wright - "The Calling Of Dan Matthews"

Georg Ebers - "In The Fire Of The Forge, Volume 3."

Georg Ebers - "Uarda, Volume 2."

One of Our Conquerors, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> One of Our Conquerors, Complete




Counsel to her to live in the hour, came, as upon others on the vessel,
from an active breath of the salt prompting to healthy hunger; and hardly
less from the splendour of the low full sunlight on the waters, the
skimming and dancing of the thousands of golden shells away from under
the globe of fire.




CHAPTER XV

A PATRIOT ABROAD

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.




CHAPTER XVI

ACCOUNTS FOR SKEPSEY'S MISCONDUCT, SHOWING HOW IT AFFECTED NATALY

His master opened on the bristling business.

'What's this, of your name in the papers, your appearing before a
magistrate, and a fine? Tell the tale shortly.'

Skepsey fell upon his attitude for dialectical defence the modest form of
the two hands at rolling play and the head deferentially sidecast. But
knowing that he had gratified his personal tastes in the act of serving
his master's interests, an interfusion of sentiments plunged him into
self-consciousness; an unwonted state with him, clogging to a simple
story.

'First, sir, I would beg you to pardon the printing of your name beside
mine . . .'

'Tush: on with you.'

'Only to say, necessitated by the circumstances of the case. I read, that
there was laughter in the court at my exculpation of my conduct--as I
have to call it; and there may have been. I may have expressed myself
. . . . I have a strong feeling for the welfare of the country.'

'So, it seems, you said to the magistrate. Do you tell me, that the cause
of your gross breach of the law, was a consideration for the welfare of
the country? Run on the facts.'

'The facts--I must have begun badly, sir.' Skepsey rattled the dry facts
in his head to right them. From his not having begun well, they had
become dry as things underfoot. It was an error to have led off with the
sentiments. 'Two very, two very respectable persons--respectable--were
desirous to witness a short display of my, my system, I would say; of my
science, they call it.'

'Don't be nervous. To the point; you went into a field five miles out of
London, in broad day, and stood in a ring, the usual Tiff-raff about
you!'

'With the gloves: and not for money, Sir: for the trial of skill; not
very many people. I cannot quite see the breach of the law.'

'So you told the magistrate. You were fined for your inability to quite
see. And you had to give security.'

'Mr. Durance was kindly responsible for me, sir: an acquaintance of the
magistrate.'

'This boxing of yours is a positive mania, Skepsey. You must try to get
the better of it--must! And my name too! I'm to be proclaimed, as having
in my service an inveterate pugilist--who breaks the law from patriotism!
Male or female, these very respectable persons--the people your show was
meant for?'

'Male, sir. Females! . . . that is, not the respectable ones.'

'Take the opinion of the respectable ones for your standard of behaviour
in future.'

'It was a mere trial of skill, sir, to prove to one of the spectators,
that I could be as good as my word. I wished I may say, to conciliate
him, partly. He would not--he judged by size--credit me with . . . he
backed my adversary Jerry Scroom--a sturdy boxer, without the knowledge
of the first principles.'

'You beat him?'

'I think I taught the man that I could instruct, sir; he was
complimentary before we parted. He thought I could not have lasted. After
the second round, the police appeared.'

'And you ran!'

'No, sir; I had nothing on my conscience.'

'Why not have had your pugilistic display in a publican's room in town,
where you could have hammer-nailed and ding-donged to your heart's
content for as long as you liked!'

'That would have been preferable, from the point of view of safety from
intrusion, I can admit-speaking humbly. But one of the parties--I had a
wish to gratify him--is a lover of old English times and habits and our
country scenes. He wanted it to take place on green grass. We drove over
Hampstead in three carts and a gig, as a company of pleasure--as it was.
A very beautiful morning. There was a rest at a public-house. Mr. Shaplow
traces the misfortune to that. Mr. Jarniman, I hear, thinks it what he
calls a traitor in the camp. I saw no sign; we were all merry and
friendly.'

'Jarniman?' said Victor sharply. 'Who is the Jarniman?'

'Mr. Jarniman is, I am to understand from the acquaintance introducing
us--a Mr. Shaplow I met in the train from Lakelands one day, and again at
the corner of a street near Drury Lane, a ham and beef shop kept by a
Mrs. Jarniman, a very stout lady, who does the chief carving in the shop,
and is the mother of Mr. Jarniman: he is in a confidential place, highly
trusted.' Skepsey looked up from the hands he soaped: 'He is a curious
mixture; he has true enthusiasm for boxing, he believes in ghosts. He
mourns for the lost days of prize-fighting, he thinks that spectres are
on the increase. He has a very large appetite, depressed spirits. Mr.
Shaplow informs me he is a man of substance, in the service of a wealthy
lady in poor health, expecting a legacy and her appearance to him. He has
the look--Mr. Shaplow assures me he does not drink to excess: he is a
slow drinker.'

Victor straightened: 'Bad way of health, you said?'

'Mr. Jarniman spoke of his expectations, as being immediate: he put it,
that he expected her spirit to be out for him to meet it any day--or
night. He desires it. He says, she has promised it--on oath, he says, and
must feel that she must do her duty to him before she goes, if she is to
appear to him with any countenance after. But he is anxious for her in
any case to show herself, and says, he should not have the heart to
reproach her. He has principles, a tear for suffering; he likes to be
made to cry. Mrs. Jarniman, his mother, he is not married, is much the
same so far, except ghosts; she will not have them; except after strong
tea, they come, she says, come to her bed. She is foolish enough to sleep
in a close-curtained bed. But the poor lady is so exceedingly stout that
a puff of cold would carry her off, she fears.'

Victor stamped his foot. 'This man Jarniman serves a lady now in
a--serious, does he say? Was he precise?'

'Mr. Jarniman spoke of a remarkable number of diseases; very complicated,
he says. He has no opinion of doctors. He says, that the lady's doctor
and the chemist--she sits in a chemist's shop and swallows other people's
prescriptions that take her fancy. He says, her continuing to live is
wonderful. He has no reason to hurry her, only for the satisfaction of a
natural curiosity.'

'He mentioned her name?'

'No name, sir.'

Skepsey's limpid grey eyes confirmed the negative to Victor, who was
assured that the little man stood clean of any falsity.

'You are not on equal terms. You and the magistrate have helped him to
know who it is you serve, Skepsey.'

'Would you please to direct me, sir.'

'Another time. Now go and ease your feet with a run over the town. We
have music in half an hour. That you like, I know. See chiefly to amusing
yourself.'

Skepsey turned to go; he murmured, that he had enjoyed his trip.

Victor checked him: it was to ask whether this Jarniman had specified
one, any one of the numerous diseases afflicting his aged mistress.

Now Jarniman had shocked Skepsey with his blunt titles for a couple of
the foremost maladies assailing the poor lady's decayed constitution: not
to be mentioned, Skepsey's thought, in relation to ladies; whose organs
and functions we, who pay them a proper homage by restricting them to the
sphere so worthily occupied by their mothers up to the very oldest date,
respectfully curtain; their accepted masters are chivalrous to them,
deploring their need at times for the doctors and drugs. He stood looking
most unhappy. 'She was to appear, sir, in a few--perhaps a week, a
month.'

A nod dismissed him.

The fun of the expedition (and Dudley Sowerby had wound himself up to
relish it) was at night in the towns, when the sound of instrumental and
vocal music attracted crowds beneath the windows of the hotel, and they
heard zon, zon, violon, fete et basse; not bad fluting, excellent
fiddling, such singing as a maestro, conducting his own Opera, would have
approved. So Victor said of his darlings' voices. Nesta's and her
mother's were a perfect combination; Mr. Barmby's trompe in union,
sufficiently confirmed the popular impression, that they were artistes.
They had been ceremoniously ushered to their carriages, with expressions
of gratitude, at the departure from Rouen; and the Boniface at Gisors had
entreated them to stay another night, to give an entertainment. Victor
took his pleasure in letting it be known, that they were a quiet English
family, simply keeping-up the habits they practiced in Old England: all
were welcome to hear them while they were doing it; but they did not give
entertainments.