The major cleared off his glass, refilled it, sipped twice, and ogled it as though he would have no peculiar objection to sip once more, took a long pinch of snuff from a box nearly as long as, and something the shape of a child’s coffin, looked around to see that we were all attention, and thus began:—
“When I have been in a moralizing mood, as I very frequently am about this hour in the morning, I have often felt surprised by what little, trivial, and insignificant circumstances our lot in life seems to be cast; I mean especially as regards the fair sex. You are prospering, as it were, to-day; to-morrow a new cut of your whiskers, a novel tie of your cravat, mars your destiny and spoils your future, varium et mutabile, as Horace has it. On the other hand, some equally slight circumstance will do what all your ingenuity may have failed to effect. I knew a fellow who married the greatest fortune in Bath, from the mere habit he had of squeezing one’s hand. The lady in question thought it particular, looked conscious, and all that; he followed up the blow; and, in a word, they were married in a week. So a friend of mine, who could not help winking his left eye, once opened a flirtation with a lively widow which cost him a special license and a settlement. In fact you are never safe. They are like the guerillas, and they pick you off when you least expect it, and when you think there is nothing to fear. Therefore, as young fellows beginning life, I would caution you. On this head you can never be too circumspect. Do you know, I was once nearly caught by so slight a habit as sitting thus, with my legs across.”
Here the major rested his right foot on his left knee, in illustration, and continued:—
“We were quartered in Jamaica. I had not long joined, and was about as raw a young gentleman as you could see; the only very clear ideas in my head being that we were monstrous fine fellows in the 50th, and that the planters’ daughters were deplorably in love with us. Not that I was much wrong on either side. For brandy-and-water, sangaree, Manilla cigars, and the ladies of color, I’d have backed the corps against the service. Proof was, of eighteen only two ever left the island; for what with the seductions of the coffee plantations, the sugar canes, the new rum, the brown skins, the rainy season, and the yellow fever, most of us settled there.”
“It’s very hard to leave the West Indies if once you’ve been quartered there.”
“So I have heard,” said Power.
“In time, if you don’t knock under to the climate, you become soon totally unfit for living anywhere else. Preserved ginger, yams, flannel jackets, and grog won’t bear exportation; and the free-and-easy chuck under the chin, cherishing, waist-pressing kind of way we get with the ladies would be quite misunderstood in less favored regions, and lead to very unpleasant consequences.”
“It is a curious fact how much climate has to do with love-making. In our cold country the progress is lamentably slow. Fogs, east winds, sleet, storms, and cutting March weather nip many a budding flirtation; whereas warm, sunny days and bright moonlight nights, with genial air and balmy zephyrs, open the heart like the cup of a camelia, and let us drink in the soft dew of—”
“Devilish poetical, that,” said Power, evolving a long blue line of smoke from the corner of his mouth.
“Isn’t it, though?” said the major, smiling graciously. “‘Pon my life, I thought so myself. Where was I?”