A party of garden-chairs on the lawn invited repose, and there the ladies seated themselves; Fanny laying down her heavy crape bonnet, and showing her pretty little delicate face, now much fresher and more roseate than when she arrived, though her wide-spreading black draperies gave a certain dignity to her slight figure, contrasting with the summer muslins of her two cousins; as did her hot-house plant fairness, with their firm, healthy glow of complexion; her tender shrinking grace, with their upright vigour. The gentleman of the party leant hack in a languid, easy posture, as though only half awake, and the whole was so quiet that Grace, missing the usual tumult of children, asked after them.
“The boys have gone to their favourite cove under the plantation. They have a fort there, and Hubert told me he was to be a hero, and Miss Williams a she-ro.”
“I would not encourage that description of sport,” said Rachel, willing to fight a battle in order to avert maternal anecdotes of boyish sayings.
“They like it so much,” said Fanny, “and they learn so much now that they act all the battles they read about.”
“That is what I object to,” said Rachel; “it is accustoming them to confound heroism with pugnacity.”
“No, but Rachel dear, they do quarrel and fight among themselves much less now that this is all in play and good humour,” pleaded Fanny.
“Yes, that may be, but you are cultivating the dangerous instinct, although for a moment giving it a better direction.”
“Dangerous? Oh, Alick! do you think it can be?” said Fanny, less easily borne down with a supporter beside her.
“According to the Peace Society,” he answered, with a quiet air of courteous deference; “perhaps you belong to it?”
“No, indeed,” answered Rachel, rather indignantly, “I think war the great purifier and ennobler of nations, when it is for a good and great cause; but I think education ought to protest against confounding mere love of combat with heroism.”
“Query, the true meaning of the word?” he said, leaning back.
“Heros, yes from the same root as the German herr,” readily responded Rachel, “meaning no more than lord and master; but there can be no doubt that the progress of ideas has linked with it a much nobler association.”
“Progress! What, since the heroes were half divine!”
“Half divine in the esteem of a people who thought brute courage godlike. To us the word maintains its semi-divinity, and it should be our effort to associate it only with that which veritably has the god-like stamp.”
“And that is—?”
“Doing more than one’s duty,” exclaimed Rachel, with a glistening eye.
“Very uncomfortable and superfluous, and not at all easy,” he said, half shutting his already heavy eyes.
“Easy, no, that’s the beauty and the glory—”
“Major Sherborne and Captain Lester in the drawing room, my lady,” announced Coombe, who had looked infinitely cheered since this military influx.
“You will come with me, Grace,” said Fanny, rising. “I dare say you had rather not, Rachel, and it would be a pity to disturb you, Alick.”
“Thank you; it would be decidedly more than my duty.”
“I am quite sorry to go, you are so amusing,” said Fanny, “but I suppose you will have settled about heroism by the time we come out again, and will tell me what the boys ought to play at.”
Rachel’s age was quite past the need of troubling herself at being left tete-a-tete with a mere lad like this; and, besides, it was an opportunity not to be neglected of giving a young carpet knight a lesson in true heroism. There was a pause after the other two had moved off. Rachel reflected for a few moments, and then, precipitated by the fear of her audience falling asleep, she exclaimed—
“No words have been more basely misused than hero and heroine. The one is the mere fighting animal whose strength or fortune have borne him through some more than ordinary danger, the other is only the subject of an adventure, perfectly irrespective of her conduct in it.”
“Bathos attends all high words,” he said, as she paused, chiefly to see whether he was awake, and not like her dumb playfellow of old.
“This is not their natural bathos but their misuse. They ought to be reserved for those who in any department have passed the limits to which the necessity of their position constrained them, and done acts of self-devotion for the good of others. I will give you an instance, and from your own profession, that you may see I am not prejudiced, besides, the hero of it is past praise or blame.”
Encouraged by seeing a little more of his eyes, she went on. “It was in the course of the siege of Delhi, a shell came into a tent where some sick and wounded were lying. There was one young officer among them who could move enough to have had a chance of escaping the explosion, but instead of that he took the shell up, its fuse burning as it was, and ran with it out of the tent, then hurled it to a distance. It exploded, and of course was his death, but the rest were saved, and I call that a deed of heroism far greater than mounting a breach or leading a forlorn hope.”
“Killed, you say?” inquired Mr. Keith, still in the same lethargic manner.
“Oh yes, mortally wounded: carried back to die among the men he had saved.”
“Jessie Cameron singing his dirge,” mumbled this provoking individual, with something about the form of his cheek that being taken by Rachel for a derisive smile, made her exclaim vehemently, “You do not mean to undervalue an action like that in comparison with mere animal pugnacity in an advance.”
“More than one’s duty was your test,” he said.
“And was not this more than duty? Ah! I see yours is a spirit of depreciation, and I can only say I pity you.”
He took the trouble to lift himself up and make a little bow of acknowledgment. Certainly he was worse than the Colonel; but Rachel, while mustering her powers for annihilating him, was annoyed by all the party in the drawing-room coming forth to join them, the other officers rallying young Keith upon his luxurious station, and making it evident that he was a proverb in the regiment for taking his ease. Chairs were brought out, and afternoon tea, and the callers sat down to wait for Colonel Keith to come in; Grace feeling obliged to stay to help Fanny entertain her visitors, and Rachel to protect her from their follies. One thing Grace began to perceive, that Lady Temple had in her former world been a person of much more consideration than she was made here, and seeing the polite and deferential manner of these officers to her, could only wonder at her gentle content and submission in meeting with no particular attention from anybody, and meekly allowing herself to be browbeaten by Rachel and lectured by her aunt.
A lecture was brewing up for her indeed. Poor Mrs. Curtis was very much concerned at the necessity, and only spurred up by a strong sense of duty to give a hint—the study of which hint cost her a whole sleepless night and a very weary Sunday morning. She decided that her best course would be to drive to Myrtlewood rather early on her way to church, and take up Fanny, gaining a previous conference with her alone, if possible. “Yes, my dear,” she said to Grace, “I must get it over before church, or it will make me so nervous all through the service.” And Grace, loving her mother best, durst not suggest what it might do to Fanny, hoping that the service might help her to digest the hint.
Mrs. Curtis’s regular habits were a good deal shocked to find Fanny still at the breakfast table. The children had indeed long finished, and were scattered about the room, one of them standing between Colonel Keith’s knees, repeating a hymn; but the younger guest was still