These simple romancers in nowise resemble the vitriolic melo-dramatists—scarcely caricatured by Punch in "Mokeanna,"—who try to drug, in default of intoxicating their audience; the liquor they proffer in their pretty flimsy cups, if not exciting, is far from deleterious; not unfrequently you catch glimpses of an under-current of honest pathos, soon smothered by garish flowers of language; and sometimes the style sparkles into mild effervescence, redeeming itself from utter vapidity; these ephemerals, indeed, belong rather to the lemonade than the milk-and-water class; but, throughout, there is a woeful want of verve and virility.
It was inexpressibly refreshing, after loitering through twenty such pages, to revert to the "History of the Crimean War:" the curt, nervous periods were a powerful mental tonic; and few of his many readers owe so practical a debt to Mr. Kinglake as the writer of these words.
CHAPTER X.
DARK DAYS.
So—heavier with each link—the chain of days dragged on. My room mate soon thawed into a stolid sociability, and was quite disposed to be communicative; but his narrative riches about matched those of the knife-grinder, and his military experience of one year only embraced one battle—that of Manassas. His ideas of English society were very remarkable. The works of Mr. G. W. M. Reynolds are much favored, it appears, by the class who believe in Mr. George F. Train's veracity and eloquence; from these turbid fountains mine honest friend's conceptions were drawn. I took some trouble to undeceive him, and partially succeeded, chiefly by insisting upon the fact that—of all living writers—the ingenious author of the "Mysteries of Everything" was probably the man least qualified, by personal experience, to discourse concerning the manners and customs of the upper, or even the educated, classes. Slowly and reluctantly, the Baltimorean abandoned his cherished ideal of the British aristocrat—a covert Caligula, with all modern improvements—varying the monotony of orgies with interludes of murder and rapine; the instrument of these pleasant vices being always ready in the shape of a Frankenstein-monster, whose mission it is to tyrannize perpetually over the guilty lordling or lady whose secret he holds; doing a steady trade of two assassinations or abductions weekly; and utterly inviolable by cord, shot, or steel, up to the final blue-fire tableau of the dreary drama. I believe that my mate is now prepared to admit, that a certain amount of piety and chastity is not incompatible with tenure of the highest dignities in the Anglican Church—that a youth need not necessarily be a savage Sybarite, because he happens to be heir to a dukedom—that matronly virtue may, with a struggle, be retained even by a Countess—and that a man may possibly be a kindly landlord, and even an honest farmer himself (that was the crowning triumph), though born a belted Earl.
On the fourth day, I bethought myself of teaching my companion piquet (no purely transatlantic game is in the least interesting, if the stakes are nominal); he acquired it with the ready aptitude that seems natural to Americans, and I soon had to drop the odds of the deal. We played many hundred parties for imaginary eagles; eventually I got a run, and left off a good winner, which, as my opponent had not money enough to buy tobacco, was highly satisfactory to every one concerned.
After a week's confinement to my room, I was allowed to take half an hour's exercise daily in a narrow strip of yard just twenty-one paces long; it was hedged in with kitchens and all sorts of disagreeable buildings, but the additional space was not to be despised. On the first evening after this concession, I was pacing up and down moodily (only inmates of the same room are allowed to descend together, so that you gain no social advantage), when just over my head, from a window on the first story, there broke out a burst of merriment, and a half-intelligible trill of baby-language; then a little round pink face, under a cloud of fair hair, peered out at me through the bars. The utter incongruity of the whole picture struck me so absurdly, that, I believe, I did indulge in a dreary laugh. Then the child began to talk again; and clapped its hands exultingly, as its mother caught an orange I threw up at her, when the sentinel's back was turned. So a sort of acquaintance began. Every day for a month, I saw that promising two-year-old (to whose sex I cannot speak with certainty); and I never heard it fretting or wailing. Whenever it saw me, it used to break out into a real uproarious laugh, as if our common imprisonment was the very best joke that had ever been presented to its infantile mind. I am ashamed to avow, that my own sense of the ridiculous was by no means so keen. The mother evidently pined far more than the baby; for her face grew, every day, more white and worn. What was the offense of either against the Government, I never heard; for no official or soldier will answer any question, and discourse between the prisoners is strictly forbidden. They went South, in the great exodus of the 20th of May. I contrived on that morning, with much cunning, to cast in six or seven oranges at their window, which, I hope, solaced those two Gentle Traytours through the burden and heat of the day.
Till I got too sulky and savage to seek unnecessary intercourse with any one, I found occasional amusement in chaffing the sentinels. The orders against conversation with these were not rigidly enforced. Finding that they rose very freely to the bait of a strained ironical politeness, I used to beg them to tell off by sections, the victims of their red right hands—chickens and ducks not being counted; also, I was fain to learn, how many rebel standards and pieces of cannon each man had captured and retained? If they took no credit for any such feats, I would by no means believe them, imputing the denial solely to the modesty inseparable from true courage.
Descending into the yard, one day, I found the sentry—an overgrown lad, with broad, crimson, beardless cheeks—in a perfect paroxysm of excitement, using great freedom of gesticulation and blasphemy. I had had immense success in bewildering this particular warrior a few days previously: so I went up to him at once: