the gentlemen of the English Guard. But read:
‘MESSIEURS DE LA GARDE FRANCAISE,
‘J’accepte votre gant. Je suis Anglais. La raison est suffisante.’
And imagine French Guardsmen reading it!
Mr. Beauchamp knew the virtue of punctiliousness in epithets and phrases of courtesy toward a formal people, and as the officers of the French Guard were gentlemen of birth, he would have them to perceive in him their equal at a glance. On the other hand, a bare excess of phrasing distorted him to a likeness of Mascarille playing Marquis. How to be English and think French! The business was as laborious as if he had started on the rough sea of the Channel to get at them in an open boat.
The lady governing his uncle Everard’s house, Mrs. Rosamund Culling, entered his room and found him writing with knitted brows. She was young, that is, she was not in her middleage; and they were the dearest of friends; each had given the other proof of it. Nevil looked up and beheld her lifted finger.
‘You are composing a love-letter, Nevil!’ The accusation sounded like irony.
‘No,’ said he, puffing; ‘I wish I were!
‘What can it be, then?’
He thrust pen and paper a hand’s length on the table, and gazed at her.
‘My dear Nevil, is it really anything serious?’ said she.
‘I am writing French, ma’am.’
‘Then I may help you. It must be very absorbing, for you did not hear my knock at your door.’
Now, could he trust her? The widow of a British officer killed nobly fighting for his country in India, was a person to be relied on for active and burning sympathy in a matter that touched the country’s honour. She was a woman, and a woman of spirit. Men had not pleased him of late. Something might be hoped from a woman.
He stated his occupation, saying that if she would assist him in his French she would oblige him; the letter must be written and must go. This was uttered so positively that she bowed her head, amused by the funny semi-tone of defiance to the person to whom he confided the secret. She had humour, and was ravished by his English boyishness, with the novel blush of the heroical-nonsensical in it.
Mrs. Culling promised him demurely that she would listen, objecting nothing to his plan, only to his French.
‘Messieurs de la Garde Francaise!’ he commenced.
Her criticism followed swiftly.
‘I think you are writing to the Garde Imperiale.’
He admitted his error, and thanked her warmly.
‘Messieurs de la Garde Imperiale!’
‘Does not that,’ she said, ‘include the non-commissioned officers, the privates, and the cooks, of all the regiments?’
He could scarcely think that, but thought it provoking the French had no distinctive working title corresponding to gentlemen, and suggested ‘Messieurs les Officiers’: which might, Mrs. Culling assured him, comprise the barbers. He frowned, and she prescribed his writing, ‘Messieurs les Colonels de la Garde Imperiale.’ This he set down. The point was that a stand must be made against the flood of sarcasms and bullyings to which the country was exposed in increasing degrees, under a belief that we would fight neither in the mass nor individually. Possibly, if it became known that the colonels refused to meet a midshipman, the gentlemen of our Household troops would advance a step.
Mrs. Calling’s adroit efforts to weary him out of his project were unsuccessful. He was too much on fire to know the taste of absurdity.
Nevil repeated what he had written in French, and next the English of what he intended to say.
The lady conscientiously did her utmost to reconcile the two languages. She softened his downrightness, passed with approval his compliments to France and the ancient high reputation of her army, and, seeing that a loophole was left for them to apologize, asked how many French colonels he wanted to fight.
‘I do not WANT, ma’am,’ said Nevil.
He had simply taken up the glove they had again flung at our feet: and he had done it to stop the incessant revilings, little short of positive contempt, which we in our indolence exposed ourselves to from the foreigner, particularly from Frenchmen, whom he liked; and precisely because he liked them he insisted on forcing them to respect us. Let his challenge be accepted, and he would find backers. He knew the stuff of Englishmen: they only required an example.
‘French officers are skilful swordsmen,’ said Mrs. Culling. ‘My husband has told me they will spend hours of the day thrusting and parrying. They are used to duelling.’
‘We,’ Nevil answered, ‘don’t get apprenticed to the shambles to learn our duty on the field. Duelling is, I know, sickening folly. We go too far in pretending to despise every insult pitched at us. A man may do for his country what he wouldn’t do for himself.’
Mrs. Culling gravely said she hoped that bloodshed would be avoided, and Mr. Beauchamp nodded.
She left him hard at work.
He was a popular boy, a favourite of women, and therefore full of engagements to Balls and dinners. And he was a modest boy, though his uncle encouraged him to deliver his opinions freely and argue with men. The little drummer attached to wheeling columns thinks not more of himself because his short legs perform the same strides as the grenadiers’; he is happy to be able to keep the step; and so was Nevil; and if ever he contradicted a senior, it was in the interests of the country. Veneration of heroes, living and dead, kept down his conceit. He worshipped devotedly. From an early age he exacted of his flattering ladies that they must love his hero. Not to love his hero was to be strangely in error, to be in need of conversion, and he proselytized with the ardour of the Moslem. His uncle Everard was proud of his good looks, fire, and nonsense, during the boy’s extreme youth. He traced him by cousinships back to the great Earl Beauchamp of Froissart, and would have it so; and he would have spoilt him had not the young fellow’s mind been possessed by his reverence for men of deeds. How could he think of himself, who had done nothing, accomplished nothing, so long as he brooded on the images of signal Englishmen whose names were historic for daring, and the strong arm, and artfulness, all given to the service of the country?—men of a magnanimity overcast with simplicity, which Nevil held to be pure insular English; our type of splendid manhood, not discoverable elsewhere. A method of enraging him was to distinguish one or other of them as Irish, Scottish, or Cambrian. He considered it a dismemberment of the country. And notwithstanding the pleasure he had in uniting in his person the strong red blood of the chivalrous Lord Beauchamp with the hard and tenacious Romfrey blood, he hated the title of Norman. We are English—British, he said. A family resting its pride on mere ancestry provoked his contempt, if it did not show him one of his men. He had also a disposition to esteem lightly the family which, having produced a man, settled down after that effort for generations to enjoy the country’s pay. Boys are unjust; but Nevil thought of the country mainly, arguing that we should not accept the country’s money for what we do not ourselves perform. These traits of his were regarded as characteristics hopeful rather than the reverse; none of his friends and relatives foresaw danger in them. He was a capital boy for his elders to trot out and banter.
Mrs. Rosamund Culling usually went to his room to
