One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
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
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