CHAPTER X
Whether Susannah, by taking her hand too suddenly from off the corporal’s shoulder (by the whisking about of her passions)——broke a little the chain of his reflexions——
Or whether the corporal began to be suspicious, he had got into the doctor’s quarters, and was talking more like the chaplain than himself———
Or whether - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br> Or whether——for in all such cases a man of invention and parts may with pleasure fill a couple of pages with suppositions——which of all these was the cause, let the curious physiologist, or the curious anybody determine——’tis certain, at least, the corporal went on thus with his harangue.
For my own part, I declare it, that out of doors, I value not death at alclass="underline" —not this ... added the corporal, snapping his fingers,—but with an air which no one but the corporal could have given to the sentiment.—In battle, I value death not this . . . and let him not take me cowardly, like poor Joe Gibbins, in scouring his gun—What is he? A pull of a trigger—a push of a bayonet an inch this way or that—makes the difference.—Look along the line—to the right—see! Jack’s down! well,—’tis worth a regiment of horse to him.—No—’tis Dick. Then Jack’s no worse.—Never mind which,—we pass on,—in hot pursuit the wound itself which brings him is not felt,—the best way is to stand up to him,—the man who flies, is in ten times more danger than the man who marches up into his jaws.—I’ve look’d him, added the corporal, an hundred times in the face,—and know what he is.—He’s nothing, Obadiah, at all in the field.—But he’s very frightful in a house, quoth Obadiah.——I never mind it myself, said Jonathan, upon a coach-box.—It must, in my opinion, be most natural in bed, replied Susannah.—And could I escape him by creeping into the worst calf’s skin that ever was made into a knapsack, I would do it there—said Trim—but that is nature.
——Nature is nature, said Jonathan.—And that is the reason, cried Susannah, I so much pity my mistress.—She will never get the better of it.—Now I pity the captain the most of any one in the family, answered Trim.——Madam will get ease of heart in weeping,—and the Squire in talking about it,—but my poor master will keep it all in silence to himself,—I shall hear 269 him sigh in his bed for a whole month together, as he did for lieutenant Le Fever.—An’ please your honour, do not sigh so piteously, I would say to him as I laid besides him. I cannot help it, Trim, my master would say,——’tis so melancholy an accident—I cannot get it off my heart.—Your honour fears not death yourself.—I hope, Trim, I fear nothing, he would say, but the doing a wrong thing.——Well, he would add, whatever betides, I will take care of Le Fever’s boy.—And with that, like a quieting draught, his honour would fall asleep.
I like to hear Trim’s stories about the captain, said Susannah.—He is a kindly-hearted gentleman, said Obadiah, as ever lived.—Aye, and as brave a one too, said the corporal, as ever stept before a platoon.—There never was a better officer in the king’s army,—or a better man in God’s world; for he would march up to the mouth of a cannon, though he saw the lighted match at the very touch-hole,—and yet, for all that, he has a heart as soft as a child for other people.——He would not hurt a chicken.——I would sooner, quoth Jonathan, drive such a gentleman for seven pounds a year—than some for eight.—Thank thee, Jonathan! for thy twenty shillings,—as much, Jonathan, said the corporal, shaking him by the hand, as if thou hadst put the money into my own pocket.——I would serve him to the day of my death out of love. He is a friend and a brother to me,—and could I be sure my poor brother Tom was dead,—continued the corporal, taking out his handkerchief,—was I worth ten thousand pounds, I would leave every shilling of it to the captain.——Trim could not refrain from tears at this testamentary proof he gave of his affection to his master.——The whole kitchen was affected.—Do tell us the story of the poor lieutenant, said Susannah.——With all my heart, answered the corporal.
Susannah, the cook, Jonathan, Obadiah, and corporal Trim, formed a circle about the fire; and as soon as the scullion had shut the kitchen door,—the corporal begun.
CHAPTER XI
I am a Turk if I had not as much forgot my mother, as if Nature had plaistered me up, and set me down naked upon the banks of the river Nile, without one.——Your most obedient servant, Madam—I’ve cost you a great deal of trouble,—I wish it may answer;—but you have left a crack in my back,—and here’s a 270 great piece fallen off here before,—and what must I do with this foot?——I shall never reach England with it.
For my own part, I never wonder at any thing;—and so often has my judgment deceived me in my life, that I always suspect it, right or wrong,—at least I am seldom hot upon cold subjects. For all this, I reverence truth as much as any body; and when it has slipped us, if a man will but take me by the hand, and go quietly and search for it, as for a thing we have both lost, and can neither of us do well without,—I’ll go to the world’s end with him:——But I hate disputes,—and therefore (bating religious points, or such as touch society) I would almost subscribe to any thing which does not choak me in the first passage, rather than be drawn into one.——But I cannot bear suffocation,——and bad smells worst of all.——For which reasons, I resolved from the beginning, That if ever the army of martyrs was to be augmented,—or a new one raised,—I would have no hand in it, one way or t’other.
CHAPTER XII
——But to return to my mother.
My uncle Toby’s opinion, Madam, “that there could be no harm in Cornelius Gallus, the Roman prætor’s lying with his wife;”——or rather the last word of that opinion,—(for it was all my mother heard of it) caught hold of her by the weak part of the whole sex:——You shall not mistake me,—I mean her curiosity,—she instantly concluded herself the subject of the conversation, and with that prepossession upon her fancy, you will readily conceive every word my father said, was accommodated either to herself, or her family concerns.
——Pray, Madam, in what street does the lady live, who would not have done the same?
From the strange mode of Cornelius’s death, my father had made a transition to that of Socrates, and was giving my uncle Toby an abstract of his pleading before his judges;——’twas irresistible:——not the oration of Socrates,—but my father’s temptation to it.——He had wrote the Life of Socrates1 himself the year before he left off trade, which, I fear, was the means of 271 hastening him out of it;——so that no one was able to set out with so full a sail, and in so swelling a tide of heroic loftiness upon the occasion, as my father was. Not a period in Socrates’s oration, which closed with a shorter word than transmigration, or annihilation,—or a worse thought in the middle of it than to be—or not to be,—the entering upon a new and untried state of things,—or, upon a long, a profound and peaceful sleep, without dreams, without disturbance?——That we and our children were born to die,—but neither of us born to be slaves.——No—there I mistake; that was part of Eleazer’s oration, as recorded by Josephus (de Bell. Judaic.)——Eleazer owns he had it from the philosophers of India; in all likelihood Alexander the Great, in his irruption into India, after he had over-run Persia, amongst the many things he stole,—stole that sentiment also; by which means it was carried, if not all the way by himself (for we all know he died at Babylon), at least by some of his maroders, into Greece,—from Greece it got to Rome,—from Rome to France,—and from France to England:——So things come round.——