The Mayor of Troy | Page 4

glance up the hill,
and with that I gives a whistle; for what do I see but a man aloft there
picking his way down on his heels with a parcel under his arm! Every
now and then he pulls up, shading his eyes, so, like as if he'd a lost his
bearin's. I glances across to Aaron, and thinks I, 'Look out for squalls!
Here's big brother coming, and a nice credit this'll be to the
family!' . . ." The historic present, as my Latin grammar used to call it,
is our favourite tense: and if you insist that, not being a hundred years
old, I cannot speak as an eye-witness of this historic scene, my answer
must be Browning's,--"All I can say is--I saw it!"]
"Gentlemen!" began the Major.
We might not all be officers, like the Mevagissey Artillery, but in the

Troy Gallants we were all gentlemen.
"Gentlemen!"--the Major waved an arm seaward--"yonder lies your
enemy. Behind you"--he pointed up the harbour to the town-- "England
relies on your protection. Shall the Corsican tyrant lay his lascivious
hands upon her ancient liberties, her reformed and Protestant religion,
her respectable Sovereign and his Consort, her mansions, her humble
cottages, and those members of the opposite sex whose charms reward,
and, in rewarding, refine us? Or shall we meet his flat-bottomed boats
with a united front, a stern 'Thus far and no farther,' and send them
home with their tails between their legs? That, gentlemen, is the
alternative. Which will you choose?"
Here the Major paused, and finding that he expected an answer, we
turned our eyes with one consent upon Gunner Sobey, the readiest man
in the company.
"The latter!" said Gunner Sobey, with precision; whereat we gave three
cheers. We dined, that afternoon, in the Long Room of the "Ship" Inn,
and afterwards danced the night through in the Town Hall.
The Major danced famously. Above all things, he prided himself on
being a ladies' man, and the fair sex (as he always called them) admired
him without disguise. His manner towards them was gallant yet
deferential, tender yet manly. He conceded everything to their
weakness; yet no man in Troy could treat a woman with greater
plainness of speech. The confirmed spinsters (high and low, rich and
poor, we counted seventy-three of them in Troy) seemed to like him
none the less because he lost no occasion, public or private, of
commending wedlock. For the doctrine of Mr. Malthus (recently
promoted to a Professorship at the East India College) he had a robust
contempt. He openly regretted that, owing to the negligence of our
forefathers, the outbreak of war found Great Britain with but fifteen
million inhabitants to match against twenty-five million Frenchmen.
They threatened to invade us, whereas we should rather have been in a
position to march on Paris! He asked nothing better. He quoted with
sardonic emphasis the remark of a politician that "'twas hardly worth
while to go to war merely to prove that we could put ourselves in a

good posture for defence."
"If I had my way," announced Major Hymen, "every woman in
England should have a dozen children at least."
"What a man!" said Miss Pescod afterwards to Miss Sally Tregentil,
who had dropped in for a cup of tea.
And yet the Major was a bachelor. They could not help wondering a
little.
"With two such names, too!" mused Miss Sally. "'Solomon' and
'Hymen'; they certainly suggest--they would almost seem to give
promise of, at least, a dual destiny."
"You mark my words," said Miss Pescod. "That man has been crossed
in love."
"But who?" asked Miss Sally, her eyes widening in speculation. "Who
could have done such a thing?"
"My dear, I understand there are women in London capable of
anything."
The Major, you must know, had spent the greater part of his life in the
capital as a silk-mercer and linen-draper--I believe, in the Old Jewry; at
any rate, not far from Cheapside. He had left us at the age of sixteen to
repair the fortunes of his family, once opulent and respected, but
brought low by his great-grandfather's rash operations in South Sea
stock. In London, thanks to an ingratiating manner with the sex on
which a linen-draper relies for patronage, he had prospered, had
amassed a competence, and had sold his business to retire to his native
town, as Shakespeare retired to Stratford-on-Avon, and at about the
same period of life.
Had the Major in London been crossed in love? No; I incline to believe
that Miss Pescod was mistaken. That hearts, up there, fluttered for a
man of his presence is probable, nay certain. In port and even in

features he bore a singular likeness to the Prince Regent. He himself
could not but be