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.
CHAPTER XVI. ACCOUNTS FOR SKEPSEY’S MISCONDUCT, SHOWING HOW IT AFFECTED NATALY
‘What’s this, of your name in the papers, your appearing before a magistrate, and a fine? Tell the tale shortly.’
Skepsey fell upon his attitude for dialectical defence the modest form of the two hands at rolling play and the head deferentially sidecast. But knowing that he had gratified his personal tastes in the act of serving his master’s interests, an interfusion of sentiments plunged him into self-consciousness; an unwonted state with him, clogging to a simple story.
‘First, sir, I would beg you to pardon the printing of your name beside mine…’
‘Tush: on with you.’
‘Only to say, necessitated by the circumstances of the case. I read, that there was laughter in the court at my exculpation of my conduct—as I have to call it; and there may have been. I may have expressed myself .... I have a strong feeling for the welfare of the country.’
‘So, it seems, you said to the magistrate. Do you tell me, that the cause of your gross breach of the law, was a consideration for the welfare of the country? Run on the facts.’
‘The facts—I must have begun badly, sir.’ Skepsey rattled the dry facts in his head to right them. From his not having begun well, they had become dry as things underfoot. It was an error to have led off with the sentiments. ‘Two very, two very respectable persons—respectable—were desirous to witness a short display of my, my system, I would say; of my science, they call it.’
‘Don’t be nervous. To the point; you went into a field five miles out of London, in broad day, and stood in a ring, the usual Tiff-raff about you!’
‘With the gloves: and not for money, Sir: for the trial of skill; not very many people. I cannot quite see the breach of the law.’
‘So you told the magistrate. You were fined for your inability to quite see. And you had to give security.’
‘Mr. Durance was kindly responsible for me, sir: an acquaintance of the magistrate.’
‘This boxing of yours is a positive mania, Skepsey. You must try to get the better of it—must! And my name too! I’m to be proclaimed, as having in my service an inveterate pugilist—who breaks the law from patriotism! Male or female, these very respectable persons—the people your show was meant for?’
‘Male, sir. Females!… that is, not the respectable ones.’
‘Take the opinion of the respectable ones for your standard of behaviour in future.’
‘It was a mere trial of skill, sir, to prove to one of the spectators, that I could be as good as my word. I wished I may say, to conciliate him, partly. He would not—he judged by size—credit me with… he backed my adversary Jerry Scroom—a sturdy boxer, without the knowledge of the first principles.’
‘You beat him?’
‘I think I taught the man that I could instruct, sir; he was complimentary before we parted. He thought I could not have lasted. After the second round, the police appeared.’
‘And you ran!’
‘No, sir; I had nothing on my conscience.’
‘Why not have had your pugilistic display in a publican’s room in town, where you could have hammer-nailed and ding-donged to your heart’s content for as long as you liked!’
‘That would have been preferable, from the point of view of safety from intrusion, I can admit-speaking humbly. But one of the parties—I had a wish to gratify him—is a lover of old English times and habits and our country scenes. He wanted it to take place on green grass. We drove over Hampstead in three carts and a gig, as a company of pleasure—as it was. A very beautiful morning. There was a rest at a public-house. Mr. Shaplow traces the misfortune to that. Mr. Jarniman, I hear, thinks it what he calls a traitor in the camp. I saw no sign; we were all merry and friendly.’
‘Jarniman?’ said Victor sharply. ‘Who is the Jarniman?’
‘Mr. Jarniman is, I am to understand from the acquaintance introducing us—a Mr. Shaplow I met in the train from Lakelands one day, and again at the corner of a street near Drury Lane, a ham and beef shop kept by a Mrs. Jarniman, a very stout lady, who does the chief carving in the shop, and is the mother of Mr. Jarniman: he is in a confidential place, highly trusted.’ Skepsey looked up from the hands he soaped: ‘He is a curious mixture; he has true enthusiasm for boxing, he believes in ghosts. He mourns for the lost days of prize-fighting, he thinks that spectres are on the increase. He has a very large appetite, depressed spirits. Mr. Shaplow informs me he is a man of substance, in the service of a wealthy lady in poor health, expecting a legacy and her appearance to him. He has the look—Mr. Shaplow assures me he does not drink to excess: he is a slow drinker.’
Victor straightened: ‘Bad way of health, you said?’
‘Mr. Jarniman spoke of his expectations, as being immediate: he put it, that he expected her spirit to be out for him to meet it any day—or night. He desires it. He says, she has promised it—on oath, he says, and must feel that she must do her duty to him before she goes, if she is to appear to him with any countenance after. But he is anxious for her in any case to show herself, and says, he should not have the heart to reproach her. He has principles, a tear for suffering; he likes to be made to cry. Mrs. Jarniman, his mother, he is not married, is much the same so far, except ghosts; she will not have them; except after strong tea, they come, she says, come to her bed. She is foolish enough to sleep in a close-curtained bed. But the poor lady is so exceedingly stout that a puff of cold would carry her off, she fears.’