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.