Peregrines Progress | Page 5

my chamber window into a fragrant summer night radiant with an orbed moon. But for once I was heedless of the ethereal beauty of the scene before me and felt none of that poetic rapture that would otherwise undoubtedly have inspired me, since my vision was turned inwards rather than out and my customary serenity hatefully disturbed.
"Ladylike!"
Thus, all unregarding, I breathed the incense of flowery perfumes and stared blindly upon the moon's splendour, pondering this hateful word in its application to myself. And gradually, having regard to the manifest injustice and bad taste of the term, conscious of the affront it implied, I grew warm with a righteous indignation that magnified itself into a furious anger against my two uncles.
"Damn them! Damn them both!" exclaimed I and, in that moment, caught my breath, shocked, amazed, and not a little ashamed at this outburst, an exhibition so extremely foreign to my usually placid nature.
'To swear is a painful exhibition of vulgarity, and passion uncontrolled lessens one's dignity and is a sign of weakness.'
Remembering this, one of my wonderful aunt's incontrovertible maxims, I grew abashed (as I say) by reason of this my deplorable lapse. And yet:
"'Ladylike!'"
I repeated the opprobrious epithet for the third time and scowled up at the placid moon.
And this, merely because I had a shrinking horror of all brutal and sordid things, a detestation for anything smacking of vulgarity or bad taste. To me, the subtle beauty of line or colour, the singing music of a phrase, were of more account than the reek of stables or the whooping clamour and excitement of the hunting-field, my joys being rather raptures of the soul than the more material pleasures of the flesh.
"And was it," I asked myself, "was it essential to exchange buffets with a 'Camberwell Chicken,' to shoot and be shot at, to spur sweating and unwilling horses over dangerous fences--were such things truly necessary to prove one's manhood? Assuredly not! And yet--'Ladylike!'"
Moved by a sudden impulse I turned from the lattice to the elegant luxuriousness of my bedchamber, its soft carpets, rich hangings and exquisite harmonies of colour; and coming before the cheval mirror I stood to view and examine myself as I had never done hitherto, surveying my reflection not with the accustomed eyes of Peregrine Vereker, but rather with the coldly appraising eyes of a stranger, and beheld this:
A youthful, slender person of no great stature, clothed in garments elegantly unostentatious.
His face grave and of a saturnine cast--but the features fairly regular.
His complexion sallow--but clear and without blemish.
His hair rather too long--but dark and crisp-curled.
His brow a little too prominent--but high and broad.
His eyes dark and soft--but well-opened and direct.
His nose a little too short to please me--but otherwise well-shaped.
His mouth too tender in its curves--but the lips close and firm.
His chin too smoothly rounded, at a glance--but when set, looks determined enough.
His whole aspect not altogether unpleasing, though I yearned mightily to see him a few inches taller.
Thus then I took dispassionate regard to, and here as dispassionately set down, my outer being; as to my inner, that shall appear, I hope, as this history progresses.
I was yet engaged on this most critical examination of my person when I was interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the flagged terrace beneath my open window and the voices of my two uncles as they passed slowly to and fro, each word of their conversation very plain to hear upon the warm, still air. Honour should have compelled me to close my ears or the lattice; had I done so, how different might this history have been, how utterly different my career. As it was, attracted by the sound of my own name, I turned from contemplation of my person and, coming to the window, leaned out again.
"Poor Peregrine," said my uncle George for the second time.
"Why the pity, George? Curse and confound it, wherefore the pity? Our youth is a perfect ass, an infernal young fish, a puppy-dog--pah!"
"Aye, but," quoth my uncle George (and I could distinguish the faint jingle of his spurs), "we roasted him devilishly to-night between us, Jervas, and never a word out o' the lad--"
"Egad, Julia did the talking for him--"
"Ha, yes--dooce take me, she did so!" exclaimed uncle George. "What an amazingly magnificent creature she is--"
"And did ye mark our youth's cool insolence, his disdainful airs--the cock of his supercilious nose--curst young puppy!"
"Most glorious eyes in Christendom," continued my uncle George, "always make me feel so dooced--er--so curst humble--no, humble's not quite the word; what I do mean is--"
"Fatuous, George?" suggested Uncle Jervas a trifle impatiently.
"Unworthy--yes, unworthy and er--altogether dooced, d'ye see--her whole life one of exemplary self-sacrifice and so forth, d'ye see, Jervas--"
"Exactly, George! Julia will never marry, we know, while she has this precious youth to pet and