Celt and Saxon | Page 7

sets. There you imagine what you will; you live
what you imagine. An Adiante meets her lover another Adiante, the
phantom likeness of her, similar to the finger-tips, hovers to a meeting
with some one whose heart shakes your manful frame at but a thought
of it. But this other Adiante is altogether a secondary conception,
barely descried, and chased by you that she may interpret the mystical
nature of the happiness of those two, close-linked to eternity, in
advance. You would learn it, if she would expound it; you are ready to
learn it, for the sake of knowledge; and if you link yourself to her and
do as those two are doing, it is chiefly in a spirit of imitation, in
sympathy with the darting couple ahead . . . .
Meanwhile he conversed, and seemed, to a gentleman unaware of the
vaporous activities of his brain, a young fellow of a certain practical
sense.
'We have not much to teach you in: horseflesh,' Mr. Adister said,
quitting the stables to proceed to the gardens.
'We must look alive to keep up our breed, sir,' said Patrick. 'We're
breeding too fine: and soon we shan't be able to horse our troopers. I
call that the land for horses where the cavalry's well-mounted on a
native breed.'
'You have your brother's notions of cavalry, have you!'
'I leave it to Philip to boast what cavalry can do on the field. He knows:
but he knows that troopers must be mounted: and we're fineing more
and more from bone: with the sales to foreigners! and the only chance
of their not beating us is that they'll be so good as follow our bad
example. Prussia's well horsed, and for the work it's intended to do, the
Austrian light cavalry's a model. So I'm told. I'll see for myself. Then
we sit our horses too heavy. The Saxon trooper runs headlong to flesh.
'Tis the beer that fattens and swells him. Properly to speak, we've no
light cavalry. The French are studying it, and when they take to

studying, they come to the fore. I'll pay a visit to their breeding
establishments. We've no studying here, and not a scrap of system that I
see. All the country seems armed for bullying the facts, till the
periodical panic arrives, and then it 's for lying flat and roaring-- and
we'll drop the curtain, if you please.'
'You say we,' returned Mr. Adister. 'I hear you launched at us English
by the captain, your cousin, who has apparently yet to learn that we are
one people.'
'We 're held together and a trifle intermixed; I fancy it's we with him
and with me when we're talking of army or navy,' said Patrick. 'But
Captain Con's a bit of a politician: a poor business, when there's
nothing to be done.'
'A very poor business!' Mr. Adister rejoined,
'If you'd have the goodness to kindle his enthusiasm, he'd be for the
first person plural, with his cap in the air,' said Patrick.
'I detest enthusiasm.
'You're not obliged to adore it to give it a wakener.
'Pray, what does that mean?'
Patrick cast about to reply to the formal challenge for an explanation.
He began on it as it surged up to him: 'Well, sir, the country that's got
hold of us, if we 're not to get loose. We don't count many millions in
Europe, and there's no shame in submitting to force majeure, if a stand
was once made; and we're mixed up, 'tis true, well or ill; and we're
stronger, both of us, united than tearing to strips: and so, there, for the
past! so long as we can set our eyes upon something to admire, instead
of a bundle squatting fat on a pile of possessions and vowing she won't
budge; and taking kicks from a big foot across the Atlantic, and
shaking bayonets out of her mob-cap for a little one's cock of the eye at
her: and she's all for the fleshpots, and calls the rest of mankind fools

because they're not the same: and so long as she can trim her ribands
and have her hot toast and tea, with a suspicion of a dram in it, she
doesn't mind how heavy she sits: nor that 's not the point, nor 's the land
question, nor the potato crop, if only she wore the right sort of face to
look at, with a bit of brightness about it, to show an idea inside striking
alight from the day that's not yet nodding at us, as the tops of big
mountains do: or if she were only braced and gallant, and cried, Ready,
though I haven't much outlook! We'd be satisfied with her for a
handsome figure. I don't know