General Bounce; Or, The Lady and the Locusts. G. J. Whyte-Melville

General Bounce; Or, The Lady and the Locusts - G. J. Whyte-Melville


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more different in disposition and appearance than were Frank and Charlie. The man—strong, sedate, practical, acute, and penetrating; the boy—light, active, hot-headed, and romantic, jumping to conclusions, averse to reasoning and reflection, acting on the impulse of the moment, and continually getting into scrapes, which his friend as continually had to get him out of. Yet after they had known each other a few months they became inseparable. Charlie went regularly, after his studies at the rectory, to pass the rest of the day at the hall; and Frank found a renewed pleasure in boating, cricket, hunting, shooting, and even fishing, from the keen enjoyment with which the “young one” entered upon these diversions. As for the “young one” himself, he thought there was nothing in the world equal to Hardingstone—so strong, so plucky, so well-read, so sagacious, with such faultless coats, and such a good seat upon a horse, he was the boy’s hero (we have all had such in our day), and he worshipped him accordingly. So ill could he bear to lose sight of his Mentor, even during the sunshiny hours of the vacation, that he had begged Hardingstone to come over to St. Swithin’s, no very great distance from his own place, and had promised to introduce him to the “Aunt Kettering,” and “Blanche,” of whom he had heard so much in the intervals of their amusements “by thicket and by stream.” The promise was made and kept—and Frank was living at the Royal Hotel, disgusting the landlord by the simplicity of his habits, and the waiter by his carelessness as regarded dinner, whilst he was growing day by day in the good graces even of Mrs. Kettering, and finding, as he himself thought with great penetration, a vast deal of sound merit in the fresh, inexperienced mind of Blanche. “Your cousin looks all the better for sea-bathing, Charlie,” said Hardingstone to his young companion, as they toiled slowly along the broiling parade, where every sunbeam was refracted with tenfold power from glaring houses and a scorching pavement. “It braces the system just as good head-work braces the intellect. People don’t train half enough, I think—even women ought to have sound minds in sound bodies; and look what indolent, unmeaning, insipid wretches half of them are—not like your aunt. Now that’s what I call a vigorous woman, Charlie; she’d do in the colonies or anywhere—she’s fit to be a queen, my boy, because she’s got some energy about her. As for you, young gentleman, you work hard enough out-of-doors, but you neglect your brains altogether—I don’t believe now that you have opened a book since you left Nobottle’s.”

      “Wrong again, Frank, as usual,” replied Charlie; “I read for an hour this very morning, whilst I was dressing; I am very fond of reading when it’s not dry.”

      “And may I ask what your early studies were, my industrious young philosopher?”

      “ ‘Parisina’ and ‘The Bride of Abydos’—by Jove, old fellow, it’s beautiful.”

      Frank made a face as if he had swallowed a pill. “ ‘Parisina’ and ‘The Bride of Abydos,’ ” he repeated, with intense disgust; “a boy of sixteen—I beg your pardon—a young man of your age reading Byron; why, you’ll arrive at a state of mental delirium tremens before you are twenty, particularly if you smoke much at the same time. I daresay you are ‘up’ in ‘Don Juan’ as well—not that I think he is half so bad for you; but no man should read sentiment in such an alluring garb as Byron dressed it, till his heart is hardened and his whiskers grown. All poetry, to my mind, has a tendency to make you more or less imbecile. You should read Bacon, my boy, and Locke, and good sound reasoning Butler; but if you must have works of imagination, take to Milton.”

      “Hate blank verse,” remarked Charlie, who opined—in which prejudice we cannot help coinciding a little—that poetry is nothing without jingle; “I can’t read three pages of ‘Paradise Lost.’ ”

      “Because your brain is softening for want of proper training,” interrupted Hardingstone; “if you go on like this you’ll very soon be fit for Jean Jacques Rousseau, and I shall give you up altogether. No, when you go back to Nobottle’s, I shall give him a hint to put you into a stiffish course of mathematics, with a few logarithms for plums, and when you are man enough to grapple with a real intellectual difficulty you will read Milton for pleasure, and like him more and more every day, for you will find——”

      “Oh! bother Milton,” interrupted Charlie; “Frank, I’ll bet you half-a-crown you don’t jump that gate without touching;” and he pointed to a high white gate leading off the dusty road into the fresh green meadows, for they were now clear of the town.

      Frank was over it like a bird, ere the words were out of his admiring disciple’s mouth, and their conversation, as they walked on, turned upon feats of strength and agility, and those actions of enterprise and adventure which are ever most captivating to the fancy of the young.

      Charles Kettering, we need scarcely say, entertained an extraordinary fondness for all bodily exercises. Intended for the army, and “waiting for his commission,” as he expressed it, he looked forward to his future profession as a career of unalloyed happiness, in which he should win fame and distinction without the slightest mental exertion—an effort to which, in truth, Charlie was always rather averse. Like most young aspirants to military honours, he had yet to learn that study, reflection, memory, and, above all, common sense, are as indispensable to the soldier’s success as to that of any other professional man; and that, although physical courage and light spirits are very useful accessories in a campaign, a good deal more is required to constitute an officer, since, even in a subordinate grade, the lives of his comrades and the safety of his division may depend on his unassisted judgment alone. Charlie had good abilities, but it was a difficult matter to get him to apply them with anything like diligence; and his friend Hardingstone, whose appreciation of a favourite’s good qualities never made him blind to his faults, saw this defect, and did all in his power to remedy it, both by precept and example.

      Mrs. Kettering’s misgivings as regarded her nephew’s duck-like propensities were founded on a thorough knowledge of his taste and habits. Another mile of walking brought the pair once more to the beach, where it curved away completely out of sight of St. Swithin’s. The heat was intense; Charlie took his coat off, sat down upon a stone, and gazed wistfully at the sea.

      “Don’t it look cool?” said he; “and don’t I wish, on a day like this, that I was a ‘merman bold’? I say, Frank, I must have a dip—I shall bundle in.”

      “In with you,” was the reply; “I haven’t had a swim since I breasted the Mediterranean last year; only we won’t stay in too long, for I promised your cousin to bring her some of that seaweed she spoke about;” and in another minute, in place of two well-dressed gentlemen standing on the beach, a couple of hats and a heap of clothes occupied the shore, whilst two white forms might be seen, ever and anon, gleaming through the blue waves as their owners dived, floated, turned upon their sides, kicked up their feet, and performed all those antics with which masterly swimmers signalise their enjoyment of their favourite element. We often hear people wishing they could fly. Now, we always think it must be exactly the same sensation as swimming; you are borne up with scarcely an effort—you seem to glide with the rapidity of a bird—you feel a consciousness of daring, and a proud superiority over nature, in thus mastering the instinctive fear man doubtless entertains of water, and bidding ocean bear you like a steed that knows its rider. The horizon appears so near that your ideas of distance become entirely confused, and the “few yards of uneven” water seem to your exulting senses like as many leagues. You dash your head beneath the green transparent wave, and shaking the salt drops from your brow, gallantly breast roller after roller as they come surging in, and with a wild, glad sense of freedom and adventure, you strike boldly out to sea. All this our two gentlemen bathers felt and enjoyed, but Frank, who had not followed this favourite diversion for a length of time, was even more delighted than his young companion with his aquatic amusements; and when the breeze freshened and the dark blue waters began to show a curl of white, he dashed away with long, vigorous strokes to such a distance from the shore as even Charlie, albeit of anything but nervous mood, thought over-venturous and enterprising. The latter was emerging from the water, when, on looking for his companion, it struck him that Frank, in the offing, was making signals of distress. Once he saw a tremendous splash, and he almost thought he heard a cry through the roar of the tide against the shingle. “By all that’s fearful, he’s in grief,”


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