One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
try, 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
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