Part 1

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COWARD OR HERO?

COWARD OR HERO?

_TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH_

BY

MRS. SALE BARKER

_WITH TWENTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS_

LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL NEW YORK: 9, LAFAYETTE PLACE 1884

_UNIFORM IN SIZE AND PRICE WITH THIS VOLUME._

ADVENTURES IN INDIA.

By W. H. G. KINGSTON. With Coloured Frontispiece and 36 Illustrations.

THE HOLIDAY ALBUM FOR BOYS.

By HENRY FRITH. With 92 Illustrations.

BEING A BOY.

By CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

HIS OWN MASTER.

By J. T. TROWBRIDGE.

FRIEND OR FOE.

By the Rev. H. C. ADAMS.

THE BOY CAVALIERS.

By the Rev. H. C. ADAMS.

UNAC THE INDIAN.

With Coloured Frontispiece and 23 Illustrations.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I THE CAPTAIN’S INDIGNATION 13

II MY NOSE 16

III COLONEL BOISSOT’S SYSTEM 18

IV GOOD RESOLUTIONS 23

V I SEE A MONSTER 25

VI FRIMOUSSE 29

VII MONTÉZUMA AND CROQUEMITAINE 32

VIII THE COLONEL’S HORSE 36

IX CHILDREN SHOULD CONFIDE IN THEIR PARENTS 39

X MONTÉZUMA’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS 41

XI DARING EXPLOITS 47

XII THE INTOLERANCE OF THE LITTLE BANTAM 51

XIII HAVE I A VOCATION? 53

XIV AN ANXIOUS QUESTION HAPPILY SETTLED 56

XV A PROJECTED BATTLE 59

XVI MY PROJECT IS DEFERRED 62

XVII SCIENTIFIC REFLECTIONS ON MY NOSE MADE 67 BY DR. LOMBALOT

XVIII I DISCOVER THAT I DO NOT POSSESS THE 71 BUMP OF COMBATIVENESS

XIX THE BANTAM CEASES TO TROUBLE ME 75

XX MISS PORQUET’S SCHOOL 78

XXI A FRIEND.—PRISONER’S BASE 85

XXII STUDIES.—SCHOOLBOY TALK 88

XXIII A DREADFUL ADVENTURE 91

XXIV DON’T LET MARC KNOW 94

XXV “THE BOY WHO HAS BEEN SO ILL” 99

XXVI MARC’S FRIENDSHIP FOR ME 101

XXVII PLANS FOR THE HOLIDAYS 105

XXVIII THE PROSPECT OF GOING TO COLLEGE 108

XXIX AT BOIS-CLAIR 110

XXX ULYSSES MAKES HIS APPEARANCE 116

XXXI SAD NEWS FOR ME 119

XXXII I GO TO COLLEGE.—A PUPIL CALLED 121 BORNIQUET

XXXIII MY NOSE STILL TROUBLES ME 126

XXXIV “AZOR! AZOR!” 128

XXXV THE THEORY OF SELF-DEFENCE 134

XXXVI STILL A COWARD 137

XXXVII INCONSISTENCY 141

XXXVIII MY PARENTS’ DEVOTION TO ME 143

XXXXIX A HUNTING COAT OF FORMER DAYS 146

XL THE EFFECT OF THE NEW COAT ON MY 149 CHARACTER

XLI THE BEETLE 155

XLII A FIGHT AT LAST 160

XLIII MY FATHER IS SATISFIED 163

XLIV EXTREMES ARE BAD 166

XLV A LAST CHAPTER, WRITTEN BY ANOTHER HAND 171

LIST OF PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

COWARD OR HERO? _Frontispiece_

“IT WAS FRIMOUSSE, OUR GREAT CAT” 27

“HE MADE A SUDDEN SPRING, AND CAME WITH A BANG 45 AGAINST THE BARS”

“THE DOCTOR STARED AT MY NOSE” 63

“A GREAT BOY OF ELEVEN, RATHER A STUPID FELLOW” 79

“I UTTERED A PIERCING CRY” 95

“I COULD NOT BEAR TO SEE A COW COMING UP TO ME” 111

“HULLO, LOOK AT AZOR!” 131

“WITH THAT COAT A NEW ERA IN MY LIFE BEGAN” 151

COWARD OR HERO?

I.

THE CAPTAIN’S INDIGNATION.

“NOW then! What is the matter?” asked my father in a sharp tone, impatiently throwing down the newspaper.

“Nothing, papa,” I answered, but in a trembling voice.

“Nothing, you say? Then why did you pull down the blind? Why did you hurry away from the window? And why, sir, has your nose turned white? What is there to be seen in the street to frighten you like that?”

The tears rushed to my eyes, and I began to sob, as I replied, “It isn’t in the street, it’s opposite.”

My father jumped up so quickly from his chair that it fell with a loud noise on the polished floor of our little dining-room. As to me, I was more dead than alive: my father’s fits of impatience terrified me. And on these occasions I would stare at him, and look so stupid, that I used to make him more angry than ever.

He went to the window, pulled up the blind, and looked at the opposite house. There, at the window, stood a little boy of about my own age, who was always watching to see me come to the window of our house in order that he might make hideous faces and put out his tongue at me across the street.

My father turned round: he stood with his arms tightly folded on his chest; he looked at me from head to foot, and then he said in a sneering voice full of scorn:—“So that is what frightened you! You unfortunate creature, you will never be fit for anything as long as you live. A great boy of eight years old! the son of a soldier, and of a brave soldier, I flatter _myself_. Here am I burdened with a boy as timid as a hare, yes a regular hare, to bring up. You may well be ashamed, sir. Thirty years’ service! Five campaigns! Eight wounds! to come to this; to come to bringing up a boy who is afraid of his own shadow! Hide yourself, miserable child,” he went on, “for I am ashamed of you. How shall I have the face to walk about the town; to meet people that I know who will say; ‘How goes it, captain? How goes it with you?’ What am I to answer to these inquiries, sir? _What_ am I to say?”

“I don’t know,” sobbed I.

“Ah! you don’t know; but I know too well. I must answer ‘You are very kind, and I thank you; I am well, but I occupy my leisure hours in educating a coward! And that coward, sir, is my own son.’ Yes, my own son. And your nose! where did you get that nose, sir?”

II.

MY NOSE.

FROM my earliest infancy the principal and dominant—too dominant—feature in my face, was an immense nose.

Now that this organ is a little disguised by a thick moustache, my friends, to flatter me, compare it to an eagle’s beak. But when I had no moustache, my companions who had no wish to flatter me, compared it to the beak of a Toucan. Unfortunately for me this was only too good a comparison, and, what was worse than all, when I was frightened (which alas! happened very often) my nose turned very pale.

“Now then,” would my father exclaim, “there’s that miserable nose of yours turned white again: rub it, do, so as to give it a little colour.”

I was such a simple little fellow, that I used seriously to follow my father’s advice, given in derision, and I would fall to rubbing my poor, large nose most furiously: labour wasted! it turned pale just the same.

My father went on reading the newspaper which he had thrown down as I have described; and I did not stir; I did not sit down nor did I dare go out of the room, but I remained sulking in the corner.

I say sulking, because I can find no other word to describe the state that my father’s fits of anger put me into. Anyone who had come into the room and seen me in that corner would have said, “Here is a sulky little boy!” But no, I was not really sulky; I felt very much hurt that my father should speak so harshly to me to cure me of a fault which wounded my own self-respect as much as it did his. I was not sulky then, only deeply distressed; but all sorts of contradictory thoughts passed through my head, and I knew neither how to utter nor explain them: I remained silent and uncomfortable, and people made the mistake of thinking me sulky.

I grieved over my father’s reprimand, and pondered sadly while he read the newspaper. I asked myself, “How is it that other little boys can help being cowards?”

I then made up my mind that for the future I _would_ be brave; yet I could not help feeling an inward consciousness that, when the opportunity came for me to show courage, I should only play the coward again. I endured real torture that hour I passed in the corner, and was finding my trouble insupportable, when suddenly the door opened to admit my father’s old friend Colonel Boissot.

III.

COLONEL BOISSOT’S SYSTEM.

COLONEL BOISSOT was an old brother-in-arms of my father, who, like him, had retired from the army, and settled down to a quiet life at Loches.

After the first few words of welcome and politeness had passed, my father asked the colonel, if he happened to know of any animal that was more timid than a hare.

“An animal more timid than a hare?” replied the colonel thoughtfully.

“Yes,” said my father.

“By Jove, certainly!” answered the colonel, “a frog is more cowardly, because in the old fable of La Fontaine we are told that the frogs were afraid of a hare.”

“Very well,” said my father, pointing at me with the newspaper, “there you see a frog then; I have only to put him in a glass bottle with a little ladder, to act as a barometer,” and as he uttered these words, he looked at me with a vexed and mortified expression, and made me a sign to go out of the room.

The colonel looked at me, with his great round eyes wide open, and making a slight grimace, asked, “Is he——”

“Good gracious! yes,” replied my father with a deep sigh. The colonel whistled softly, as he looked at my father, and he rolled his eyes back to me with an astonished expression in them, pretended or real. This warlike man felt surprised, apparently, to find a coward in the son of a brother-in-arms. All the time he stared at me I did not dare to move.

At last he shook his head several times and said, grinding his teeth the while, “You know, Bicquerot, I belong to the old school. For such fancies as these (for they are pure fancies), I know but of one remedy,” and he made suggestive and disagreeable movements with his cane as if chastising an imaginary coward.

“Oh, no!” my father answered quickly, “no, the remedy would be worse than the malady. And think, too, of his mother: she, the poor dear mother, would go mad. No! no! certainly not.”

“You are wrong,” drily replied the advocate of violent measures, “it is an infallible remedy.”

“That is possible,” said my father; “but _I_ could never resort to it.” Then turning to me he said in a more gentle tone of voice, “Now go, my poor boy, run and find your mother.”

There was something so sad, so touching in the tone of my father’s voice, the expression of his face was so kind, that if the odious colonel had not been present I should have thrown my arms round his neck and kissed him.

But I dared not, and as I awkwardly shut the door after me, with trembling hands, I again heard these words issue, one by one, from between the clenched teeth of the terrible colonel: “_Bicquerot, you are wrong._”

IV.

GOOD RESOLUTIONS.

BUT no! my father was not wrong; for I loved him with all my heart, in spite of his fits of anger, and I would never have deceived him in anything. If he had beaten me, I felt that I could never have loved him so much again. I should, most likely, have become a liar like Robert Boissot. For, after all, the old school system had not succeeded so well with him. It is true that when his father was present, he was all that could be desired in a boy; one would have thought he was on parade too, because of his soldier-like bearing. But when his father turned his back, matters were, indeed, very different. He spoke of the colonel in the most disrespectful way; and I will not repeat here the dreadful untruths which he would utter without the slightest shame. It is true I was a coward, but they might have killed me outright, before I would have said the things of my parents, that he said of his. And he would laugh while he said them! Actually laugh.

Before his father, the colonel, this boy would pretend to be most friendly to me: he would call me his “dear good little Paul.” If I had dared I would have called him a liar before everybody; for when his father was not there, he would take me into a corner, and make the most hideous faces at me, and pull my poor long nose, till I cried; threatening at the same time, if I told anyone, that he would squeeze me to death in the doorway.

Was not this cowardice? but of a different kind from mine, and surely a far worse kind. “Ah! if I dared to do things, if I could only get over the nervous trembling and that stupid imagination of mine which showed me dangers in every direction!” I said this to myself as I walked slowly down stairs; I did not hurry myself, because my eyes were red, and I was anxious my mother should not see that I had been crying, for I knew it would worry her.

These are the questions I asked myself as I reached the last step:—“In a small house like this, where I know every corner, why do I fancy that somebody is always hiding to pounce out upon me? why do I fancy this when I really know that there is no one and nothing to frighten me? Why do I fancy always that there are strange beasts lurking in the shadows which will jump out upon me to pinch and bite, and prick and scratch me, or perhaps, which is almost worse, place a great hairy paw upon my neck, or look at me with great dreadful eyes? Why am I so silly as to fancy all this? But now, for the future, I am resolved I will never be so foolish again.”

V.

I SEE A MONSTER.

POUF! Bang! At that moment something black, light, and at the same time enormously large, some shapeless yet undoubtedly ferocious creature, passed within a foot of my face with the speed of lightning. It touched the ground without making the least sound, seemed to roll over in the half-dark corridor, and then suddenly disappeared at the little door leading into the garden.

I tried to scream, but my voice failed me: I trembled from head to foot; my legs gave way and I involuntarily sat down on the last step of the staircase, and covered my face with my hands, not to see again that horrible thing! Without doubt it would return. It was hiding somewhere, I was sure. What might it not do to me? I waited in an agony, my eyes firmly closed. Just then the door of the kitchen opened, and my mother, greatly surprised, asked me what I was doing there.

I told her all.

As I did so she raised her head, saw the door of the meat-safe open, and said: “The creature that has frightened you so dreadfully was still more frightened by you! It was Frimousse, our great cat, who had come to steal some meat, which I am sorry to see she has done, and when she heard you coming she was put to flight in a great hurry. Now, see,” said my kind mother, smiling. “Satisfy yourself; the cat has carried off the piece of beef which remained from luncheon. Look, there is the empty dish! Don’t be frightened any more, my dear little boy, but now come with me: when Mrs. Puss has behaved in this naughty way, I always know where to find her. Come along, you must see her for yourself.”

I answered “Yes” to all my mother said, but in my heart I believed she was mistaken. That horrible creature that passed me was too large, too shapeless, to be our cat.

VI.

FRIMOUSSE.

MY mother, taking me by the hand, led me with her into the kitchen, and gave me a glass of sugar-and-water to help me to recover myself. She then showed me Frimousse, who had taken refuge on the roof of a little shed at the end of the garden, and the naughty cat was there eating greedily her stolen meal. While devouring the meat, she kept jerking her head first to the right, then to the left, as if she found it rather tough. At the same time she looked at us, or rather at me, with a menacing and defiant expression.

“You see now that it was naughty Frimousse,” said my mother, in her loving, caressing voice; “don’t you, my darling boy? You are quite sure now that there was nothing to frighten you, are you not?”

“Yes, mamma, I do see it: I was a silly boy,” I replied.

My reason, the fact of seeing the cat eating the stolen meat, my mother’s assertion, everything told me clearly enough that it was Frimousse that had frightened me so: still in spite of all, something within me seemed to deny the fact. Was it possible that Frimousse, our cat that I knew so well, could have appeared so enormous?

Well, it was just possible perhaps; and now I began to fancy that there was something very strange about that cat. While she was eating, what fierce looks she gave me! Certainly there seemed something unnatural and odd—dreadful too—about her. And those strange glances which she gave me! Surely it was against _me_ that she cherished spiteful feelings! Then another idea came into my head: perhaps this cat, who gave me such vicious looks, was not a real cat? Perhaps, I thought, she has the power, at times, to take the shape of that fearful, that horrible creature which I saw on the staircase.

If I had explained these foolish thoughts to my mother, I knew beforehand how silly she would have thought me, and what she would have answered. I knew also, beforehand that her answer would not convince me. Oh! how terrible it was! Still, I preferred to say nothing, and I kept my thoughts to myself to torment me.

VII.

MONTÉZUMA AND CROQUEMITAINE.

I THINK I know partly how this unfortunate and unhealthy state of mind began with me: this painful habit of seeing something extraordinary and terrible in the most simple matters, and of peopling the house with unearthly and mischievous beings. I think it came about in this way:—

When I was quite little, I used often to be given in charge to my father’s orderly. He was a brave and honest fellow, and very fond of me. His name was Montamat, but everyone called him Montézuma. Unfortunately for me he possessed far more imagination than judgment.

Whenever I was naughty or unreasonable, he would call for Croquemitaine; and as he was a ventriloquist you may suppose it was not long before a conversation commenced with _this_ extraordinary person, who used to reply to the questions asked of him from the dark, mysterious, and fearful regions of the kitchen chimney sometimes; or sometimes from the bottom of my porridge bowl, or again sometimes from the inside of a drawer in the table close to where my little chair was placed. As I believed most implicitly in Croquemitaine’s existence, Montézuma made me do exactly as he liked by this means. Just fancy! here was a man who appeared to me to be on the most intimate terms with a mysterious and supernatural being! A man who could summon this being at will, and, at a single word, send him off again about his business, just at the moment when, almost mad with anguish, I feared, yet longed, to see the mysterious being appear to me.

Our discussions would always end in the same way when I had been naughty.

“Now will you do it again?” Montézuma would ask in a stern voice.

“Oh, no! no! my good Montézuma,” I would cry, “I will never, never do so any more.”

“Then, Croquemitaine,”—Montézuma would say in a gentle voice,—“you can go away, we will not give you our little Paul to-day; for he has promised to be a good boy.”

“All right! all right! I shall have him the next time,” a most terrible gruff voice would answer. And repeating “all right” a good many times, the voice sounding less and less distinct and further away each time, Croquemitaine would depart for that occasion.

As I grew bigger Croquemitaine came less frequently. I believe that Montézuma got tired of always employing the same means of keeping me in order. Still I did not lose my faith in this supernatural being. Very often, when the furniture creaked, or the wind whistled down the chimney or in the passages; when the porridge-pot boiled over, and made strange grumbling sounds, I felt that there was something more than usual in these noises; something very strange and mysterious. Then my heart would beat violently, and Montézuma bursting out laughing would cry, “Ah! ah! ah! how white your nose has turned!”

“But,” would I reply in a piteous tone of voice, “I have not been naughty.”

“That you know best!” Montézuma would answer sententiously. “What does your conscience say?”

VIII.

THE COLONEL’S HORSE.

THE tormentor chosen by Montézuma to succeed Croquemitaine, was the horse belonging to the colonel of my father’s regiment. It was a beautiful white horse with a splendid mane, and a grand thick tail which swept the ground. When he stamped and snorted, and turned his graceful head from side to side, he looked so intelligent, that I easily believed everything that Montézuma told me about him. This marvellous horse, according to Montézuma, knew all that passed, and repeated it to the colonel; also, if I did not take care, all my particular misdeeds to my father. For instance, Montézuma would say, “So you won’t eat your soup?”

“No! I won’t eat my soup! and pray, what of that?” I would reply.

“Very well,” was the answer, “the colonel’s horse will tell your father to-morrow on parade!”

I would have eaten my soup if it had been boiling, rather than expose myself to the tale-bearing of that white horse. I learnt, little by little—as Montézuma found me more difficult to manage—all sorts of horrible peculiarities belonging to the colonel’s terrible horse. I heard that he would bite most cruelly all little boys who refused to go to bed at eight o’clock, who kicked their father’s orderly, or who preferred to sail their boats on the pond in the Palais Royal (where Montézuma did _not_ happen to meet his friends) to taking a walk in the Jardin des Plantes (where Montézuma always met his friends). It seemed, according to Montézuma, that this much-to-be-dreaded animal had devoured the little son of the master shoemaker, because he fought with his schoolmistress: nothing had been found of this unfortunate but his shoes, his cap, and a letter in which he declared that he thought he quite deserved his fate.

With a sigh of anguish I would anxiously ask, “And what did his mamma say?”

Montézuma replied, “She was in great grief.”

“I will never kick you again, Montézuma,” would I cry. “Oh! pray of the horse not to eat me, because it would make mamma so sad.”

“Very well; this time you are safe,” Montézuma then gravely replied. “But remember, if you ever do so again, he will not listen to my entreaties.”