People who pitied him (and they were many) wondered as to how soon he would break his neck, and remonstrated with his father for allowing him to ride alone, or in charge of an attendant unable to control him.
In the matter of his curious love of fencing Major John Decies was deeply concerned, obtained more and more details of his “dweam,” taught him systematically and scientifically to fence, bought him foils and got them shortened. He also interested him in a series of muscle-developing exercises which the boy called his “dismounted squad-dwill wiv’out arms,” and performed frequently daily, and with gusto.
Lieutenant Lord Ochterlonie (Officers’ Light-Weight Champion at Aldershot) rigged him up a small swinging sand-bag and taught him to punch with either hand, and drilled him in foot-work for boxing.
Later he brought the very capable ten-year-old son of a boxing Troop-Sergeant and set him to make it worth Dam’s while to guard smartly, to learn to keep his temper, and to receive a blow with a grin.
(Possibly a better education than learning declensions, conjugations, and tables from a Eurasian “governess”.)
He learnt to read unconsciously and automatically by repeating, after Nurse Beaton, the jingles and other letter-press beneath the pictures in the books obtained for him under Major Decies’ censorship.
On his sixth birthday, Major John Decies had Damocles over to his bungalow for the day, gave him a box of lead soldiers and a schooner-rigged ship, helped him to embark them and sail them in the bath to foreign parts, trapped a squirrel and let it go again, allowed him to make havoc of his possessions, fired at bottles with his revolver for the boy’s delectation, shot a crow or two with a rook-rifle, played an improvised game of fives with a tennis-ball, told him tales, and generally gave up the day to his amusement. What he did not do was to repeat the experiment of a year ago, or make any kind of reference to snakes….
A few days later, on the morning of the New-Year’s-Day Review, Colonel Matthew de Warrenne once again strode up and down his verandah, arrayed in full review-order, until it should be time to ride to the regimental parade-ground.
He had coarsened perceptibly in the six years since he had lost his wife, and the lines that had grown deepest on his hard, handsome face were those between his eyebrows and beside his mouth—the mouth of an unhappy, dissipated, cynical man….
He removed his right-hand gauntlet and consulted his watch…. Quarter of an hour yet.