Читать книгу The Scarlet Pimpernel Looks at the World - Baroness Orczy - Страница 4

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I have just chanced upon a story — the story of a mongrel dog — which interested me vastly. This dog was the friend of a group of soldiers in a dug-out during the late War, and on one occasion his opportune waking and growling warned his company of a heavy German attack which was pending, and which otherwise might have broken through a vital part of the British defensive lines. In return his name was inscribed on the roll of the company, and he was entitled thereafter to draw one man’s rations daily.

A year later, in the heat of a furious enemy attack, this dog’s master fell seriously wounded in the bottom of a trench, and a German attacking force poured along, past the place where he lay. In their haste they would certainly have trampled the man to death, but for the fact that Mike, one ear torn by a bullet, stood growling over his master’s prostrate body; so threatening was his attitude that the hurrying Germans made shift to avoid him.

So the two were found an hour later when the trench was recaptured by a British unit; and it was all the ambulance men could do to persuade the dog, faint from loss of blood as he was, to relinquish his guard. For that episode Mike was awarded the privilege of marching on parade in front of the regiment, even before its officers and colour-sergeants. And I pray you, my friends, in what country save in romantic, sentimental England would that great honour be given even to the noblest of animals?

For England to-day, no less than in my own time or during the centuries that preceded me, is incurably romantic. The legend so rife in Europe of the stolid, immovable, unfeeling, bacon-and-eggs John Bull Englishman is false.

There is more real romance hidden beneath the formal Anglo-Saxon exterior than is possessed by the effervescent Gaul or the polished Roman. The reserve, the coolness, the marked difference between casual acquaintance and friendship, the adherence to convention, the general old-fashioned quiet which the Briton adopts, is an artificial wall which he builds around his inner self.

The careless observer, seeing this artificial wall, never imagines for one moment that there may be something undreamed-of behind it. It is only the serious psychologist who realizes that right within those defences which guard the average Briton against being stared at more than he likes, he keeps his romantic ideals as carefully tended as a gardener does a rare and delicate plant. From his infancy he has been taught by parents and teachers how to build up his wall of reserve, how to fashion therein the gate of unbreakable self-control with the key so hidden that none may chance upon it.

At school — and, by my faith, I am happy to see how these magnificent public schools have spread and increased in number since my time — he is furthered impressed with the vital necessity of keeping every emotion and every ideal strictly concealed behind that artificial wall. And this attitude of mind soon becomes a cult — a kind of fetish. The average British schoolboy is taught that feeling and emotions are things to be ashamed of, so he keeps them carefully hidden away within himself. Whereupon thoughtless people jump to the conclusion that he hasn’t any, and should they, perchance, find out their mistake, they talk at once and with bitterness of the ‘perfidious, hypocritical Islanders’.

Actually your ordinary man in the street prefers not to talk about romance because he takes it very seriously. I am sure you have often seen, say, a Frenchman or a German fall on another’s neck and kiss him in public; but this is not a sure indication that the two will be on speaking terms the next day. Indeed they may not be friends at all, they may not even know each other: the act may be a mere spontaneous expression of joy engendered by the occasion of some patriotic demonstration or public rejoicing.

On our side of the Channel, on the other hand, a handshake and a few quiet words may be the outward manifestation of a lifelong friendship, or the last farewell to a friend whom one may never hope to see again. And there is one other fact, m’dears, which I must mention here because it goes further than any other in refuting the fallacy that our tight little island is an old, unromantic Sobersides, and that is that in no other country in the world are there so many happy marriages. Now, why is that, I ask you?

It is because when so vital a matter as matrimony is at stake your average Briton brings out the key to that walled garden of his emotions, which he has guarded so jealously from prying eyes since his boyhood, and throws open wide the gates of his secret soul; because, in short, he is incurably romantic, and looks upon marriage as the most romantic event of his life.

I could quote you instances of British romanticism by the yard, of heroic deeds which put to shame the legendary prowess of a Bayard. Think of that lion-hearted piper, not so long ago, whose regiment was ambushed by the enemy in the Afghan hill country. The men were surrounded by a hostile tribe, their ranks were breaking under a deadly fusillade, but the gallant piper just marched up and down between the ranks and continued to play one pibroch after another encouraging the wearied fighters with the skirl of his pipes; and when after a time he fell, shot in both legs, he dragged himself up to a sitting posture and continued to rally his comrades by playing steadily on, the pibroch which they loved.

There is an outcry among some of you these days that modern England and its people have become more severely practical since my time, more sternly materialistic, and that life has become, in consequence, dull and colourless. La, my friends, you have only to look at a pair of lovers wandering arm-in-arm along a country lane, or through the meadows at eventide, to realize that side by side with all that materialism there still remains in the heart of your people the old ideal of romantic love.

And to our more emotional neighbours I would say: “See how the romanticism of our people rises when occasion demands to a sublimity which, I venture to assert, has never been surpassed by any other nation. Think, my friends, of Greater Britain, the World Empire on which the sun never sets. Does it not in itself prove to you that a handful of romantic, close-tongued Islanders can and does accomplish deeds of which any people would be justly proud?

‘Think of the valour of this nation which you are wont to call unimaginative, setting up on arid, sun-baked or ice-bound shores its glorious Flag, the precursor and emblem of its equitable laws, ready to face a hundred perils, starvation, hostility, sometimes even torture and death, for the sake of adding a few square miles to its vast Empire, though the very names of these pioneers often remain unrecorded and forgotten.’

That is what I would say to our neighbours, my friends — even I, your very own Scarlet Pimpernel. And it is the same to-day as it has been in the past: your true Anglo-Saxon has the love of romance buried deeply and firmly within his soul. What, think you, made Drake insist on finishing his game of bowls when the Armada was in sight, or caused that officer of Wellington’s army to say grace after receiving the first French fire at Waterloo? What else can account for the thousand and one quixotic, selfless and splendid deeds which are accomplished by the average Briton every day all over the world — deeds that have caused the romantically-minded Continental peoples to speak of us in tones made up of admiration and awe as ‘those mad Englishmen’?

Gadzooks! I have been spoken of as a romanticist myself; but, by my faith, in comparison with you moderns of to-day I begin to think that I was nothing but a practical, stolid, average Briton, or bacon-and-eggs John bull.

Ask my friend Chauvelin — he knows!