Chapter XLV: A Last Chapter, Written by Another Hand 171

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LIST OF PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.

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PAGE

COWARD OR HERO? _Frontispiece_

“IT WAS FRIMOUSSE, OUR GREAT CAT” 27

“HE MADE A SUDDEN SPRING, AND CAME WITH A BANG 45
AGAINST THE BARS”

“THE DOCTOR STARED AT MY NOSE” 63

“A GREAT BOY OF ELEVEN, RATHER A STUPID FELLOW” 79

“I UTTERED A PIERCING CRY” 95

“I COULD NOT BEAR TO SEE A COW COMING UP TO ME” 111

“HULLO, LOOK AT AZOR!” 131

“WITH THAT COAT A NEW ERA IN MY LIFE BEGAN” 151

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COWARD OR HERO?

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I.

THE CAPTAIN’S INDIGNATION.

“NOW then! What is the matter?” asked my father in a sharp tone, impatiently throwing down the newspaper.

“Nothing, papa,” I answered, but in a trembling voice.

“Nothing, you say? Then why did you pull down the blind? Why did you hurry away from the window? And why, sir, has your nose turned white? What is there to be seen in the street to frighten you like that?”

The tears rushed to my eyes, and I began to sob, as I replied, “It isn’t in the street, it’s opposite.”

My father jumped up so quickly from his chair that it fell with a loud noise on the polished floor of our little dining-room. As to me, I was more dead than alive: my father’s fits of impatience terrified me. And on these occasions I would stare at him, and look so stupid, that I used to make him more angry than ever.

He went to the window, pulled up the blind, and looked at the opposite house. There, at the window, stood a little boy of about my own age, who was always watching to see me come to the window of our house in order that he might make hideous faces and put out his tongue at me across the street.

My father turned round: he stood with his arms tightly folded on his chest; he looked at me from head to foot, and then he said in a sneering voice full of scorn:—“So that is what frightened you! You unfortunate creature, you will never be fit for anything as long as you live. A great boy of eight years old! the son of a soldier, and of a brave soldier, I flatter _myself_. Here am I burdened with a boy as timid as a hare, yes a regular hare, to bring up. You may well be ashamed, sir. Thirty years’ service! Five campaigns! Eight wounds! to come to this; to come to bringing up a boy who is afraid of his own shadow! Hide yourself, miserable child,” he went on, “for I am ashamed of you. How shall I have the face to walk about the town; to meet people that I know who will say; ‘How goes it, captain? How goes it with you?’ What am I to answer to these inquiries, sir? _What_ am I to say?”

“I don’t know,” sobbed I.

“Ah! you don’t know; but I know too well. I must answer ‘You are very kind, and I thank you; I am well, but I occupy my leisure hours in educating a coward! And that coward, sir, is my own son.’ Yes, my own son. And your nose! where did you get that nose, sir?”

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II.

MY NOSE.

FROM my earliest infancy the principal and dominant—too dominant—feature in my face, was an immense nose.

Now that this organ is a little disguised by a thick moustache, my friends, to flatter me, compare it to an eagle’s beak. But when I had no moustache, my companions who had no wish to flatter me, compared it to the beak of a Toucan. Unfortunately for me this was only too good a comparison, and, what was worse than all, when I was frightened (which alas! happened very often) my nose turned very pale.

“Now then,” would my father exclaim, “there’s that miserable nose of yours turned white again: rub it, do, so as to give it a little colour.”

I was such a simple little fellow, that I used seriously to follow my father’s advice, given in derision, and I would fall to rubbing my poor, large nose most furiously: labour wasted! it turned pale just the same.

My father went on reading the newspaper which he had thrown down as I have described; and I did not stir; I did not sit down nor did I dare go out of the room, but I remained sulking in the corner.

I say sulking, because I can find no other word to describe the state that my father’s fits of anger put me into. Anyone who had come into the room and seen me in that corner would have said, “Here is a sulky little boy!” But no, I was not really sulky; I felt very much hurt that my father should speak so harshly to me to cure me of a fault which wounded my own self-respect as much as it did his. I was not sulky then, only deeply distressed; but all sorts of contradictory thoughts passed through my head, and I knew neither how to utter nor explain them: I remained silent and uncomfortable, and people made the mistake of thinking me sulky.

I grieved over my father’s reprimand, and pondered sadly while he read the newspaper. I asked myself, “How is it that other little boys can help being cowards?”

I then made up my mind that for the future I _would_ be brave; yet I could not help feeling an inward consciousness that, when the opportunity came for me to show courage, I should only play the coward again. I endured real torture that hour I passed in the corner, and was finding my trouble insupportable, when suddenly the door opened to admit my father’s old friend Colonel Boissot.

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III.

COLONEL BOISSOT’S SYSTEM.

COLONEL BOISSOT was an old brother-in-arms of my father, who, like him, had retired from the army, and settled down to a quiet life at Loches.

After the first few words of welcome and politeness had passed, my father asked the colonel, if he happened to know of any animal that was more timid than a hare.

“An animal more timid than a hare?” replied the colonel thoughtfully.

“Yes,” said my father.

“By Jove, certainly!” answered the colonel, “a frog is more cowardly, because in the old fable of La Fontaine we are told that the frogs were afraid of a hare.”

“Very well,” said my father, pointing at me with the newspaper, “there you see a frog then; I have only to put him in a glass bottle with a little ladder, to act as a barometer,” and as he uttered these words, he looked at me with a vexed and mortified expression, and made me a sign to go out of the room.

The colonel looked at me, with his great round eyes wide open, and making a slight grimace, asked, “Is he——”

“Good gracious! yes,” replied my father with a deep sigh. The colonel whistled softly, as he looked at my father, and he rolled his eyes back to me with an astonished expression in them, pretended or real. This warlike man felt surprised, apparently, to find a coward in the son of a brother-in-arms. All the time he stared at me I did not dare to move.

At last he shook his head several times and said, grinding his teeth the while, “You know, Bicquerot, I belong to the old school. For such fancies as these (for they are pure fancies), I know but of one remedy,” and he made suggestive and disagreeable movements with his cane as if chastising an imaginary coward.

“Oh, no!” my father answered quickly, “no, the remedy would be worse than the malady. And think, too, of his mother: she, the poor dear mother, would go mad. No! no! certainly not.”

“You are wrong,” drily replied the advocate of violent measures, “it is an infallible remedy.”

“That is possible,” said my father; “but _I_ could never resort to it.” Then turning to me he said in a more gentle tone of voice, “Now go, my poor boy, run and find your mother.”

There was something so sad, so touching in the tone of my father’s voice, the expression of his face was so kind, that if the odious colonel had not been present I should have thrown my arms round his neck and kissed him.

But I dared not, and as I awkwardly shut the door after me, with trembling hands, I again heard these words issue, one by one, from between the clenched teeth of the terrible colonel: “_Bicquerot, you are wrong._”

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IV.

GOOD RESOLUTIONS.

BUT no! my father was not wrong; for I loved him with all my heart, in spite of his fits of anger, and I would never have deceived him in anything. If he had beaten me, I felt that I could never have loved him so much again. I should, most likely, have become a liar like Robert Boissot. For, after all, the old school system had not succeeded so well with him. It is true that when his father was present, he was all that could be desired in a boy; one would have thought he was on parade too, because of his soldier-like bearing. But when his father turned his back, matters were, indeed, very different. He spoke of the colonel in the most disrespectful way; and I will not repeat here the dreadful untruths which he would utter without the slightest shame. It is true I was a coward, but they might have killed me outright, before I would have said the things of my parents, that he said of his. And he would laugh while he said them! Actually laugh.

Before his father, the colonel, this boy would pretend to be most friendly to me: he would call me his “dear good little Paul.” If I had dared I would have called him a liar before everybody; for when his father was not there, he would take me into a corner, and make the most hideous faces at me, and pull my poor long nose, till I cried; threatening at the same time, if I told anyone, that he would squeeze me to death in the doorway.

Was not this cowardice? but of a different kind from mine, and surely a far worse kind. “Ah! if I dared to do things, if I could only get over the nervous trembling and that stupid imagination of mine which showed me dangers in every direction!” I said this to myself as I walked slowly down stairs; I did not hurry myself, because my eyes were red, and I was anxious my mother should not see that I had been crying, for I knew it would worry her.

These are the questions I asked myself as I reached the last step:—“In a small house like this, where I know every corner, why do I fancy that somebody is always hiding to pounce out upon me? why do I fancy this when I really know that there is no one and nothing to frighten me? Why do I fancy always that there are strange beasts lurking in the shadows which will jump out upon me to pinch and bite, and prick and scratch me, or perhaps, which is almost worse, place a great hairy paw upon my neck, or look at me with great dreadful eyes? Why am I so silly as to fancy all this? But now, for the future, I am resolved I will never be so foolish again.”

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V.