Skepsey agreed: ‘If we could get men to do the work, sir!’
Mr. Barmby was launching forth: Plenty of men!—His mouth was blocked by the reflection, that we count the men on our fingers; often are we, as it were, an episcopal thumb surveying scarce that number of followers! He diverged to censure of the marchings and the street-singing: the impediment to traffic, the annoyance to a finely musical ear. He disapproved altogether of Matilda Pridden’s military display, pronouncing her to be, ‘Doubtless a worthy young person.’
‘Her age is twenty-seven,’ said Skepsey, spying at the number of his own.
‘You have known her long?’ Mr. Barmby asked.
‘Not long, sir. She has gone through trouble. She believes very strongly in the wilclass="underline" —If I will this, if I will that, and it is the right will, not wickedness, it is done—as good as done; and force is quite superfluous. In her sermons, she exhorts to prayer before action.’
‘Preaches?’
‘She moves a large assembly, sir.’
‘It would seem, that England is becoming Americanized!’ exclaimed the Conservative in Mr. Barmby. Almost he groaned; and his gaze was fish-like in vacancy, on hearing the little man speak of the present intrepid forwardness of the sex to be publicly doing. It is for men the most indigestible fact of our century: one that—by contrast throws an overearthly holiness on our decorous dutiful mothers, who contentedly worked below the surface while men unremittingly attended to their interests above.
Skepsey drew forth a paper-covered shilling-book: a translation from the French, under a yelling title of savage hate of Old England and cannibal glee at her doom. Mr. Barmby dropped his eyelashes on it, without comment; nor did he reply to Skepsey’s forlorn remark: ‘We let them think they could do it!’
Behold the downs. Breakfast is behind them. Miss Radnor likewise: if the poor child has a name. We propose to supply the deficiency. She does not declare war upon tobacco. She has a cultured and a beautiful voice. We abstain from enlargeing on the charms of her person. She has resources, which representatives of a rival creed would plot to secure.
‘Skepsey, you have your quarters at the house of Miss Radnor’s relatives?’ said Mr. Barmby, as they emerged from tunnelled chalk.
‘Mention, that I think of calling in the course of the day.’
A biscuit had been their breakfast without a name.
They parted at the station, roused by the smell of salt to bestow a more legitimate title on the day’s restorative beginning. Down the hill, along by the shops, and Skepsey, in sight of Miss Nesta’s terrace, considered it still an early hour for a visitor; so, to have the sea about him, he paid pier-money, and hurried against the briny wings of a South-wester; green waves, curls of foam, flecks of silver, under low-flying grey-dark cloud-curtains shaken to a rift, where at one shot the sun had a line of Nereids nodding, laughing, sparkling to him. Skepsey enjoyed it, at the back of thoughts military and naval. Visible sea, this girdle of Britain, inspired him to exultations in reverence. He wished Mr. Durance could behold it now and have such a breastful. He was wishing he knew a song of Britain and sea, rather fancying Mr. Durance to be in some way a bar to patriotic poetical recollection, when he saw his Captain Dartrey mounting steps out of an iron anatomy of the pier, and looking like a razor off a strap.
‘Why, sir!’ cried Skepsey.
‘Just a plunge and a dozen strokes,’ Dartrey said; ‘and you’ll come to my hotel and give me ten minutes of the “recreation”; and if you don’t come willingly, I shall insult your country.’
‘Ah! I wish Mr. Durance were here,’ Skepsey rejoined.
‘It would upset his bumboat of epigrams. He rises at ten o’clock to a queasy breakfast by candlelight, and proceeds to composition. His picture of the country is a portrait of himself by the artist.’
‘But, sir, Captain Dartrey, you don’t think as Mr. Durance does of England!’
‘There are lots to flatter her, Skepsey! A drilling can’t do her harm. You’re down to see Miss Nesta. Ladies don’t receive quite so early. And have you breakfasted? Come on with me quick.’ Dartrey led him on, saying: ‘You have an eye at my stick. It was a legacy to me, by word of mouth, from a seaman of a ship I sailed in, who thought I had done him a service; and he died after all. He fell overboard drunk. He perished of the villain stuff. One of his messmates handed me the stick in Cape Town, sworn to deliver it. A good knot to grasp; and it ‘s flexible and strong; stick or rattan, whichever you please; it gives point or caresses the shoulder; there’s no break in it, whack as you may. They call it a Demerara supple-jack. I’ll leave it to you.’
Skepsey declared his intention to be the first to depart. He tried the temper of the stick, bent it a bit, and admired the prompt straightening.
‘It would give a good blow, sir.’
‘Does its business without braining.’
Perhaps for the reason, that it was not a handsome instrument for display on fashionable promenades, Dartrey chose it among his collection by preference; as ugly dogs of a known fidelity are chosen for companions. The Demerara supple-jack surpasses bull-dogs in its fashion of assisting the master; for when once at it, the clownish-looking thing reflects upon him creditably, by developing a refined courtliness of style, while in no way showing a diminution of jolly ardour for the fray. It will deal you the stroke of a bludgeon with the playfulness of a cane. It bears resemblance to those accomplished natural actors, who conversationally present a dramatic situation in two or three spontaneous flourishes, and are themselves again, men of the world, the next minute.
Skepsey handed it back. He spoke of a new French rifle. He mentioned, in the form of query for no answer, the translation of the barking little volume he had shown to Mr. Barmby: he slapped at his breast-pocket, where it was. Not a ship was on the sea-line; and he seemed to deplore that vacancy.
‘But it tells both ways,’ Dartrey said. ‘We don’t want to be hectoring in the Channel. All we want, is to be sure of our power, so as not to go hunting and fawning for alliances. Up along that terrace Miss Nesta lives. Brighton would be a choice place for a landing.’
Skepsey temporized, to get his national defences, by pleading the country’s love of peace.
‘Then you give-up your portion of the gains of war—an awful disgorgement,’ said Dartrey. ‘If you are really for peace, you toss all your spare bones to the war-dogs. Otherwise, Quakerly preaching is taken for hypocrisy.’
‘I ‘m afraid we are illogical, sir,’ said Skepsey, adopting one of the charges of Mr. Durance, to elude the abominable word.
‘In you run, my friend.’ Dartrey sped him up the steps of the hotel.
A little note lay on his breakfast-table. His invalid uncle’s valet gave the morning’s report of the night.
The note was from Mrs. Blathenoy: she begged Captain Dartrey, in double underlinings of her brief words, to mount the stairs. He debated, and he went.
She was excited, and showed a bosom compressed to explode: she had been weeping. ‘My husband is off. He bids me follow him. What would you have me do?’
‘Go.’
‘You don’t care what may happen to your friends, the Radnors?’
‘Not at the cost of your separation from your husband.’
‘You have seen him!’
‘Be serious.’
‘Oh, you cold creature! You know—you see: I can’t conceal. And you tell me to go. “Go!” Gracious heavens! I’ve no claim on you; I haven’t been able to do much; I would have—never mind! believe me or not. And now I’m to go: on the spot, I suppose. You’ve seen the man I ‘m to go to, too. I would bear it, if it were not away from… out of sight of I’m a fool of a woman, I know. There’s frankness for you! and I could declare you’re saying “impudence” in your heart—or what you have for one. Have you one?’
‘My dear soul, it ‘s a flint. So just think of your duty.’ Dartrey played the horrid part of executioner with some skill.