A third rode up at a startling pace—
A suitor poor, with a homely face—
No doubts appeared to bind him.
He kissed her lips and he pressed her waist,
And off he rode with the maiden, placed
On a pillion safe behind him.
And she heard the suitor bold confide
This golden hint to the priest who tied
The knot there’s no undoing;
“With pretty young maidens who can choose,
’Tis not so much the gallant who woos,
As the gallant’s way of wooing!”
HONGREE AND MAHRY
A RICHARDSON MELODRAMA
The sun was setting in its wonted west,
When Hongree, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,
Met Mahry Daubigny, the Village Rose,
Under the Wizard’s Oak—old trysting-place
Of those who loved in rosy Aquitaine.
They thought themselves unwatched, but they were not;
For Hongree, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,
Found in Lieutenant-Colonel Jooles Dubosc
A rival, envious and unscrupulous,
Who thought it not foul scorn to dodge his steps,
And listen, unperceived, to all that passed
Between the simple little Village Rose
And Hongree, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores.
A clumsy barrack-bully was Dubosc,
Quite unfamiliar with the well-bred tact
That animates a proper gentleman
In dealing with a girl of humble rank.
You’ll understand his coarseness when I say
He would have married Mahry Daubigny,
And dragged the unsophisticated girl
Into the whirl of fashionable life,
For which her singularly rustic ways,
Her breeding (moral, but extremely rude),
Her language (chaste, but ungrammatical),
Would absolutely have unfitted her.
How different to this unreflecting boor
Was Hongree, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores.
Contemporary with the incident
Related in our opening paragraph,
Was that sad war ’twixt Gallia and ourselves
That followed on the treaty signed at Troyes;
And so Lieutenant-Colonel Jooles Dubosc
(Brave soldier, he, with all his faults of style)
And Hongree, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,
Were sent by Charles of France against the lines
Of our Sixth Henry (Fourteen twenty-nine),
To drive his legions out of Aquitaine.
When Hongree, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,
Returned, suspecting nothing, to his camp,
After his meeting with the Village Rose,
He found inside his barrack letter-box
A note from the commanding officer,
Requiring his attendance at head-quarters.
He went, and found Lieutenant-Colonel Jooles.
“Young Hongree, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,
This night we shall attack the English camp:
Be the ‘forlorn hope’ yours—you’ll lead it, sir,
And lead it too with credit, I’ve no doubt.
As every man must certainly be killed
(For you are twenty ’gainst two thousand men),
It is not likely that you will return.
But what of that? you’ll have the benefit
Of knowing that you die a soldier’s death.”
Obedience was young Hongree’s strongest point,
But he imagined that he only owed
Allegiance to his Mahry and his King.
“If Mahry bade me lead these fated men,
I’d lead them—but I do not think she would.
If Charles, my King, said, ‘Go, my son, and die,’
I’d go, of course—my duty would be clear.
But Mahry is in bed asleep, I hope,
And Charles, my King, a hundred leagues from this.
As for Lieutenant-Colonel Jooles Dubosc,
How know I that our monarch would approve
The order he has given me to-night?
My King I’ve sworn in all things to obey—
I’ll only take my orders from my King!”
Thus Hongree, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,
Interpreted the terms of his commission.