The Clever Woman of the Family [54]
them to confound heroism with pugnacity." "No, but Rachel dear, they do quarrel and fight among themselves much less now that this is all in play and good humour," pleaded Fanny. "Yes, that may be, but you are cultivating the dangerous instinct, although for a moment giving it a better direction." "Dangerous? Oh, Alick! do you think it can be?" said Fanny, less easily borne down with a supporter beside her. "According to the Peace Society," he answered, with a quiet air of courteous deference; "perhaps you belong to it?" "No, indeed," answered Rachel, rather indignantly, "I think war the great purifier and ennobler of nations, when it is for a good and great cause; but I think education ought to protest against confounding mere love of combat with heroism." "Query, the true meaning of the word?" he said, leaning back. "Heros, yes from the same root as the German herr," readily responded Rachel, "meaning no more than lord and master; but there can be no doubt that the progress of ideas has linked with it a much nobler association." "Progress! What, since the heroes were half divine!" "Half divine in the esteem of a people who thought brute courage godlike. To us the word maintains its semi-divinity, and it should be our effort to associate it only with that which veritably has the god-like stamp." "And that is--?" "Doing more than one's duty," exclaimed Rachel, with a glistening eye. "Very uncomfortable and superfluous, and not at all easy," he said, half shutting his already heavy eyes. "Easy, no, that's the beauty and the glory--" "Major Sherborne and Captain Lester in the drawing room, my lady," announced Coombe, who had looked infinitely cheered since this military influx. "You will come with me, Grace," said Fanny, rising. "I dare say you had rather not, Rachel, and it would be a pity to disturb you, Alick." "Thank you; it would be decidedly more than my duty." "I am quite sorry to go, you are so amusing," said Fanny, "but I suppose you will have settled about heroism by the time we come out again, and will tell me what the boys ought to play at." Rachel's age was quite past the need of troubling herself at being left tete-a-tete with a mere lad like this; and, besides, it was an opportunity not to be neglected of giving a young carpet knight a lesson in true heroism. There was a pause after the other two had moved off. Rachel reflected for a few moments, and then, precipitated by the fear of her audience falling asleep, she exclaimed-- "No words have been more basely misused than hero and heroine. The one is the mere fighting animal whose strength or fortune have borne him through some more than ordinary danger, the other is only the subject of an adventure, perfectly irrespective of her conduct in it." "Bathos attends all high words," he said, as she paused, chiefly to see whether he was awake, and not like her dumb playfellow of old. "This is not their natural bathos but their misuse. They ought to be reserved for those who in any department have passed the limits to which the necessity of their position constrained them, and done acts of self-devotion for the good of others. I will give you an instance, and from your own profession, that you may see I am not prejudiced, besides, the hero of it is past praise or blame." Encouraged by seeing a little more of his eyes, she went on. "It was in the course of the siege of Delhi, a shell came into a tent where some sick and wounded were lying. There was one young officer among them who could move enough to have had a chance of escaping the explosion, but instead of that he took the shell up, its fuse burning as it was, and ran with it out of the tent, then hurled it to a distance. It exploded, and of course was his death, but the rest were saved, and I call that a deed of heroism far greater than mounting a breach or leading a forlorn hope." "Killed, you say?" inquired Mr. Keith, still in the same lethargic manner. "Oh yes, mortally wounded: carried back to die among the men he had saved." "Jessie Cameron singing