"Hugh?" said Hildegarde, smiling.
"Most astonishing child I ever saw in my life!" the Colonel cried. "Most amazing child! to see how he flings himself on books is a wonder. I don't let him keep at 'em long, you understand. A brain like that needs play, sir, play! I've bought him a little foil, and—Harry Monmouth! he gave me a lunge in quart that almost broke my guard, last night. But stories! 'More about kings, please, Sire!'—he's got a notion of calling me Sire—ho! ho! can't get Saul out of his head, d'ye see? I feel like Charlemagne, or Barbarossa, or some of 'em. 'More about kings when they were in battle.' He's learned 'Agincourt' by heart, just from my reading it to him. 'Fair stood the wind for France,' hey? Finest ballad in the English language. Says you read it to him, too. And if I am busy he goes to Elizabeth Beadle and frightens her out of her wits with sentences out of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Now this boy—mark me, Hildegarde!—will turn out something very uncommon, if he has the right training. That scoundrelly knave, Ephraim Loftus, wanted to make a gentleman of him! Ho! Ephraim doesn't know how a gentleman's shoes look, unless he has been made acquainted with the soles of them. I kicked him myself once, I remember, for beating a horse unmercifully. This boy will be a great scholar, mark my words! And whatever assistance I can give him shall be cheerfully given. Why, the lad has genius! positive genius!"
"Oh!" said Hildegarde, her heart beating fast. "Then you think, Colonel Ferrers, that a—a person should be educated for what seems to be his natural bent. Do you think that?"
"Harry Monmouth! of course I do! Look at me! D'ye think I was fitted for a mercantile life, for example? Never got algebra through my head, and hate figures. The army was what I was born for! Born for it, sir! Shouldered my pap-spoon in the cradle, and presented arms whenever I was taken up. Ho! ho! ho!"
Hildegarde began to tremble, but her courage did not fail. "And—and Jack, dear Colonel Ferrers," she said softly. "He was born for music, was he not?"
The Colonel turned square round, and gazed at her from under brows that met over his hooked nose. "What then?" he said slowly, after a pause. "If my nephew was born for a fiddler, what then, Miss Hildegarde Grahame? Is it any reason why he should not be trained for something better? I like the boy's playing very well, very well indeed, when he keeps clear of Dutch discords. But you would not compare playing the fiddle with the glorious Art of War, I imagine?"
"Not for an instant!" cried Hildegarde, flushing deeply under the Colonel's half-stern, half-quizzical gaze. "Compare music, lovely music, that cheers and comforts and delights all the world, with fierce, cruel, dreadful war? Look at Jack, with his mind full of beautiful harmonies and—and 'airs from heaven'—they really are! making us laugh or cry, or dance or exult, just by the motion of his hand. Look at him, and then imagine him in a red coat, with a gun in his hand—"
"Red is the British colour," said the Colonel.
"Well, a blue coat, then. What difference does it make?—a gun in his hand, shooting people who never did him any harm, whose faces he had never even seen. Oh, Colonel Ferrers, I would not have believed it of you!"
"And who asked you to believe it of me, pray?" asked the Colonel, as he drove up to the door of Braeside. "To tell the truth, young lady, war is very much more in your line than in my nephew's. Harry Monmouth! Bellona in person, I verily believe. My compliments to your mother, and say I shall call her Madam Althæa in future, for she has brought forth a firebrand."