Lewis Hough

“ Shooting! hunting! Gould’s words made his nerves tingle from head to foot with excitement. And he had thought the fellow who now offered him a taste of such pleasures a muff, a bore, a sycophant, and done his best to avoid him! How wrong it is to have prejudices!
“Well, then, when will you come?” asked Gould.
“As soon as it is convenient to have me after Christmas,” replied Crawley. “I must spend the Christmas week at home, you know; but then I am free. I should tell you, though, that I cannot shoot or ride a little bit. I have never had any practice, and you will find me an awful duffer.” ”

“ If there is one quality more conducive to success in all the affairs of life than another, it is—well, Cheek.
I protest that I have paced the room for a quarter of an hour like a caged hyena, and masticated my pen in a manner suited rather to a slice of the breast, than a quill out of the wing, of a goose, in my futile effort to find a legitimate name for it—Cheek.
Pray then pardon the use of a slang term; Impudence will not do, for it may exist without shrewdness: nor Self-possession, for that is a passive rather than an active virtue; nor Courage, which is often allied with modesty ”

“ One dead camel’s skeleton is uncommonly like another, and they lay about in various directions, showing that caravans converged to or diverged from El Obeid by different routes. When the sun burst forth with all that inconceivable grandeur which drives artists who visit the country to despair, and causes untravelled gazers on their pictures to accuse them of exaggeration, when their efforts have as a fact fallen far short of the reality, Harry’s eyes scanned the horizon in every direction for an enemy, but he was alone on the sandy expanse. ”

“ Now, Crawley was undoubtedly the boy held in greatest estimation in the school: captain and treasurer of the cricket and football clubs, good-looking, pleasant in manners, open, generous, clever at lessons, he was a special favourite with masters and boys, and therefore Gould burnt his incense before him. For to be Crawley’s chum was to gain a certain amount of consideration in the school, and Gould did not mind shining with a reflected light. He was not like Saurin in that respect, whose egotism saved him at least from being a toad-eater. ”

“ Also, when bloaters, sprats, or sausages were in question, it was well not to feed in the room in which the smell of preparation was most powerful.
Though the half was drawing to its close, the evening board was bountifully spread; for Forsyth’s birthday had come off two days before, and brought with it a token from home—a wicker token which the Lord Mayor himself would not have despised. There was a ham, succulent and tender; a tongue, fresh, not tinned, boiled, not stewed, of most eloquent silence; a packet of sausages, a jar of marmalade, and, most delicious of all, some potted shrimps. ”

“ Cheek, n. s. A rare union of fun, impudence, readiness, perseverance, and intelligence, endowing its possessor with the power of walking quietly over social obstacles, which form an impassable barrier to the majority of mankind. For examples, see below.
It was “cheek” that gave Diogenes the advantage over Alexander; that procured wives (it is great at that) for the early Romans; that got dear old Falstaff out of all his scrapes, enabling him to “make a good end,” instead of a parlous bad one; that procured James Boswell admission to a club and a niche in history denied to many a better man ”

“ So across a field to a little broken hedge, which Sir Robert took in his stride without his rider feeling it. Then sharp to the right towards a bigger fence, with a ditch beyond; nothing for a girl to crane at, but having to be jumped. Crawley, straining his eyes after the hounds, and not sitting very tight, was thrown forward when the horse rose, and, when he alighted, lost his stirrup, reeled, and came over on to mother earth; and when he rose to his feet he had the mortification to see Sir Robert careering away in great delight, and he proceeded to plod through the heavy ground after him. ”

“ A knot of Arabs retreating to their last position had evidently been overtaken by a shell bursting in their midst, and their fearfully mangled bodies showed what modern science can effect when applied in earnest to the work of war. On the next ridge the Soudanese dead lay thicker; lying dotted about singly where the Martini-Henry bullets had stopped them, or strewed in rows like the corn sheaves where the reaping machine has passed, as the Gatling guns, sweeping slowly from right to left, and pouring missiles with the regularity and continuous stream of a fire-engine, had mowed their ranks. ”

“ For Vincent Crawley, though he had many good qualities, was by no means perfect. He was rather spoiled by indulgence at home and popularity at school, and thought a good deal too much of himself for one thing, and for another he was inclined to be thoughtless and extravagant in money matters. It is excellent to be generous with money which is absolutely our own; but to seek to get the credit for generosity at other people’s expense is quite another, and not at all an admirable thing. ”

“ I cried, quite bothered.
“Is your friend?”
My friend! What a way of alluding to the man she was to marry!
“I don’t know,” I repeated. “What on earth are you talking about? Are you all cracked? First of all my uncle, then my aunt, and now you want to know whether Ormond or I are mediums. What is a medium?”
“What! have you heard nothing of spiritualism and table-turning?”
“Oh, ah!” I cried, suddenly enlightened, “now I knew what you mean; but the fact is that I am such a humdrum material sort of animal that I take very little interest in the supernatural.” ”

“ The four camels went to the right-about not a bit too soon; for a puff of smoke spurted up from a mimosa bush beyond, and the vicious whiz of a bullet hinted to the leader of the camel nearest to it that it would be better for him not to stop to wind up his watch or pare his nails before he got under shelter.
Pop, pop, pop, pop! A camel is a big mark, and it was clever to miss the lot. One indeed had a lock of hair chipped off him, as if the marksman were an artist who wanted a painting brush ”

“ There are few sensations more delightful than the first confident sweep on the outside edge, with the blade biting well into the clear smooth ice, and Buller felt as if he could never have enough of it, and he kept on, trying to make larger and larger segments of a circle, not heeding the falls he got for the next half-hour, when it was time to be getting back, and he had reluctantly to take his skates off, and jog home at a trot. ”

“ Surely such an incongruous question was never put in an Arab town in the heart of Africa by a sheikh dressed in bernouse and turban, with a jewel-hilted yataghan at his side, sitting cross-legged on a cushion. No wonder Daireh was flabbergasted; such a thunderbolt out of a clear sky has seldom fallen upon any man.
“Your Mightiness is mistaken,” he stammered. “I have lived, earning an honest livelihood as a poor merchant, at Khartoum and Berber, Alexandria and Cairo. But what is Dublin? I know it not.”
“Is that your photograph?” asked Harry Forsyth, suddenly, in English. ”

“ But to enter an inn, or to visit Slam’s, was a serious offence, entailing severe punishment, and even expulsion, if repeated.
Yet one beautiful warm summer’s evening, when the birds were singing and the grasshoppers chirruping, and all nature invited mankind to play cricket or lawn-tennis, if there were no river handy for boating, four youths might have been seen (but were not, luckily for them) approaching the forbidden establishment. ”

“ The red ants, had he known it, were the Black Watch, going into action in their red coats and kilts; the grey were the men of the South Staffordshire Regiment; the large black ants in rear were the guns. He did not know these details, but he recognised English troops, not seen now for a long time by him, and his heart beat high with excitement and hope. Now was his chance of escape. Unless he were killed during the assault, or taken prisoner and shot before he had time to explain himself, he would surely be able to get away in the confusion of fight. ”

“ But when the ice was broken he talked freely enough, and from that time the intimacy commenced. Yet at times he had qualms, and feared that he had been rash to depart from his custom of close secrecy; and it often occurred to him that it would be well to draw Saurin into some act of complicity, and so seal his lips effectually and for ever. He felt and expressed great admiration for the air-gun, and suggested that they should try it some moonlight night upon the roosting pheasants. ”

“ The cavalry marched in rear of the square, with the exception of the scouts, who with the Mounted Infantry explored the ground in front, preventing the possibility of a surprise. Tramp, tramp, mile after mile, hour after hour, plodded the two brigades, with many a halt to enable the man-drawn guns to keep with them. But tedium and fatigue were thought nothing of. The man who would consider a five-mile walk without an object a frightful infliction would think nothing of ten with a gun in his hand, and the chance of game getting up every minute. It is the same with all sports. ”

“ But in the bivouac at Gakdul, Dobbs awoke with a start under the impression that a snake was gliding over his face, and sitting up found that it was Hump licking him, the empty water-bottle still round his neck.
It now seemed hopeless to get rid of him, so they let him take his chance; to live if he could manage to supply himself, and to be shot should his sufferings from thirst prove too great. Poor Hump! The most thoughtful feared that he had a poor chance of reaching a good old age. ”

“ What a row that hawk of yours makes, Perry!”
“Yes, he ought to be hooded, you know. Hateful times we live in, don’t we! How jolly it must have been when education meant learning to ride, fly a hawk, train a hound, shoot with the bow, and use the sword and buckler, instead of mugging at abominable lessons.”
“Right you are, sir,” said Mr Slam; “why, even when I was a lad a fight or a bit of cocking could be brought off without much trouble, but nowadays the beaks and perlice are that prying and interfering there’s no chance hardly. ”

“ One of the most enviable of mortals was Halton, a lad who might be the model for either painter or poet in search of an ideal hero. Handsome, strong, active, acquiring proficiency in all games and athletic exercises almost instinctively, a horseman with the hands of a Chaloner, and the seat of a Land, endowed with a bright intelligence which seized the common sense of things, and comprehended the meaning of an order as well as its literal injunctions, and a happy disposition which made a trouble of nothing, he was a general favourite wherever he went. ”

“ It added to his popularity, and popularity had become as the air he breathed. For the only real test of generosity is self-denial. If you go without something you really want in order to oblige someone else, that is genuine, admirable, and somewhat rare. But if you have everything you want and forego nothing whatever by conferring a favour, you may show good nature, careless indifference to the value of money, or a pleasant sense of patronage, but not necessarily true generosity. ”

“ Ay, ay; to aid the march of civilisation, as the cant phrase goes; to bring nations closer together, that they may cut one another’s throats when they meet. To make machines do the work by which men earn their living, and so first drive them into cities, and then starve them. Or, perhaps, you will be a lawyer, and learn how to darken language into obscure terms, by which a simple, honest man may be made to sell his birthright without knowing what he is doing. ”

“ Saurin made considerable progress, and was a long way the best of the class—so much so, indeed, that he had to play lightly with the others, or they would not all set to with him. Even such a critic as Slam expressed his approval, and this superiority was sugar and sack to Saurin, being indeed the first consolation he had received since the mortification of being turned out of the eleven. But, alas! sparring was not a recognised item of Weston athletics, and he could not gain the applause of the whole school by his proficiency, which was only known to a very few of the initiated. ”

“ A fair breeze, and sailing; a foul one or a calm, and rowing; running on banks, and pushing off; getting nearly wrecked half a dozen times in the rapids, and escaping. And so they progressed until at length the mighty river divided into two streams, that to the left the Blue Nile, that to the right the White, and the real Nile, and they found at the junction the city of Khartoum, dazzling in the glare of the sunshine, with the governor’s house and the mosque rising above the flat roofs. ”

“ At the same time he exerted himself to become popular, and since he was no longer anxious to thrust himself perpetually into the foremost place, he was not without success.
“What a much better fellow Saurin is now he has given up going to that Slam’s yard!” said one of his intimates, and his hearers acquiesced. He had never repeated that abominable hint about the possibility of Crawley’s not having lost the money at all; but Gould had taken up the idea, and the gossip had spread, as such ill-natured talk about any one who is popular or in a higher position than others, is sure to do. ”

“ I will give you a horse fleet as the wind, and a sword that would split a hair or sever an iron bar, boy!”
“I have thought I should like the army, too, sir,” said bewildered Harry, trying vainly to understand, and catching at the sword and horse as something tangible.
“The army! To be a European soldier! A living machine—the slave of slaves! To fight without a cause, even without an object! To waste your blood in the conquest of a country and the ruin and slaughter of its inhabitants, and then to leave it! Madmen! Ye kill and are killed for nothing ”

“ And surely not without cause, for the scene which had just been enacted, without any rehearsal, for their benefit was simply astounding.
“Fancy Tom Buller the chief of a gang of poachers!” cried Saurin. “By Jove, I did not think it was in him, and fairly confess that I have not done him justice. He is a dark horse and no mistake.”
“Why, you don’t for a moment suppose that there is anything in it, do you?” asked Robarts, who heard him.
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” replied Saurin; “perhaps not. Awful liars those keeper chaps, no doubt. We shall know all about it in time, I suppose.” ”

“ There was nothing, but still the intense look remained, and it made Harry feel as if cold water was running down his back. His uncle spoke at length, low and slowly at first, more energetically as he went on.
“I see it; the crescent rises; the sordid hordes of the West fall in ruin around. The squalid denizens of cities find the fiendish devices of destruction to which they trust for putting the weak over the strong fail them. Man to man they have to stand, and they fall like corn before the scythe.” ”

“ I have secured his silence.”
“At what a price!” sighed Edwards.
“Look here,” murmured Saurin, turning on him fiercely; “if it is as you think, you take advantage of it, which is just as bad. We are in the same boat, and must sink or swim together. What is done cannot be undone; don’t be a fool. If your weakness excites suspicion it will be ruin to both of us.”
“I know, I know,” said Edwards, turning away with loathing.
They hated the sight of one another now, these two inseparables. What revolted Edwards most of all was the other’s insinuation about Crawley. ”

“ And when they lit their pipes and lay round the bivouac fire, talking over the events of the day, what a time that was! The First Blankshire had not come off scathless as regarded men or officers. There was a captain lying yonder with his cloak over his face who would never hear the cheery bugle call again; a lieutenant was in the ambulance tent with a bullet in his leg, forcing himself to bear the pain without moaning. ”