“In the year ’2 we were at war with France—you know that, of course. It seemed then as if war were our normal state; I could hardly remember a time when Europe had been at peace. In these days of stagnant quiet it appears as if people’s kith and kin always lived out their full time and died in their beds. Then there was hardly a house where there was not one dead, either in battle, or of his wounds after battle, or of some dysentery or ugly parching fever. As for us, we had always been a soldier family—always; there was not one of us that had ever worn a black gown or sat upon a high stool with a pen behind his ear. I had lost uncles and cousins by the half-dozen and dozen, but, for my part, I did not much mind, as I knew very little about them, and black was more becoming wear to a person with my bright colour than anything else.”
At the mention of her bright colour I unintentionally lift my eyes from my knitting, and contemplate the yellow bagginess of the poor old cheek nearest me. Oh, Time! Time! what absurd and dirty turns you play us! What do you do with all our fair and goodly things when you have stolen them from us? In what far and hidden treasure-house do you store them?
“But I did care very much—very exceedingly—for my dear old father—not so old either—younger than my eldest boy was when he went; he would have been forty-two if he had lived three days longer. Well, well, child, you must not let me wander; you must keep me to it. He was not a soldier, was not my father; he was a sailor, a post-captain in his Majesty’s navy and commanded the ship Thunderer in the Channel fleet.
“I had struck seventeen in the year ’2, as I said before, and had just come home from being finished at a boarding-school of repute in those days, where I had learnt to talk the prettiest ancien régime French and to hate Bonaparte with unchristian violence from a little ruined émigre maréchale; had also, with infinite expenditure of time, labour, and Berlin wool, wrought out ‘Abraham’s Sacrifice of Isaac’ and ‘Jacob’s First Kiss to Rachel,’ in finest cross-stitch. Now I had bidden adieu to learning; had inly resolved never to disinter ‘Télémaque’ and Thompson’s ‘Seasons’ from the bottom of my trunk; had taken a holiday from all my accomplishments with the exception of cross-stitch, to which I still faithfully adhered—and indeed, on the day I am going to mention, I recollect that I was hard at work on Judas Iscariot’s face in Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’—hard at work at it, sitting in the morning sunshine, on a straight-backed chair. We had flatter backs in those days; our shoulders were not made round by lolling in easy-chairs; indeed, no then upholsterer made a chair that it was possible to loll in. My father rented a house near Plymouth at that time, an in-and-out nooky kind of old house—no doubt it has fallen to pieces long years ago—a house all set round with unnumbered flowers, and about which the rooks clamoured all together from the windy elm tops. I was labouring in flesh-coloured wool on Judas’s left cheek, when the door opened and my mother entered. She looked as if something had freshly pleased her, and her eyes were smiling. In her hand she held an open and evidently just-read letter.
“‘A messenger has come from Plymouth,’ she says, advancing quickly and joyfully towards me. ‘Your father will be here this afternoon.’
“‘This afternoon!’ cry I, at the top of my voice, pushing away my heavy work-frame. ‘How delightful! But how?—how can that happen?’
“‘They have had a brush with a French privateer,’ she answers, sitting down on another straight-backed chair, and looking again over the large square letter, destitute of envelope, for such things were not in those days, ‘and then they succeeded in taking her. Yet they were a good deal knocked about in the process, and have had to put into Plymouth to refit, so he will be here this afternoon for a few hours.’
“‘Hurrah!’ cry I, rising, holding out my scanty skirts, and beginning to dance.
“‘Bobby Gerard is coming with him,’ continues my mother, again glancing at her despatch. ‘Poor boy, he has had a shot through his right arm, which has broken the bone, so your father is bringing him here for us to nurse him well again.’
“I stop in my dancing.