Lord Ormont and his Aminta | Page 5

in red and white and green uniform, tunic and breeches,
and a chimney-afire of feathers; and how the giant he was charged at
the head of ten thousand horse, all going like a cataract under a rainbow
over the rocks, right into the middle of the enemy and through; and he a
spark ahead, and the enemy streaming on all sides flat away, as you see
puffed smoke and flame of a bonfire. That was fun to set boys jigging.
No wonder how in Russia the Cossacks feared him, and scampered
from the shadow of his plumes--were clouds flying off his breath! That
was a fine warm picture for the boys on late autumn or early winter
evenings, Shalders warming his back at the grate, describing bivouacs
in the snow. They liked well enough to hear him when he was not
opposing Matey and Lord Ormont. He perked on his toes, and fetched
his hand from behind him to flourish it when his Murat came out. The
speaking of his name clapped him on horseback--the only horseback he
ever knew. He was as fond of giving out the name Murat as you see in
old engravings of tobacco-shops men enjoying the emission of their
whiff of smoke.

Matey was not inclined to class Lord Ormont alongside Murat, a
first-rate horseman and an eagle-eye, as Shalders rightly said; and
Matey agreed that forty thousand cavalry under your orders is a toss
above fifteen hundred; but the claim for a Frenchman of a superlative
merit to swallow and make nothing of the mention of our best cavalry
generals irritated him to call Murat a mountebank.
Shalders retorted, that Lord Ormont was a reprobate.
Matey hoped he would some day write us an essay on the morale of
illustrious generals of cavalry; and Shalders told him he did not
advance his case by talking nonsense.
Each then repeated to the boys a famous exploit of his hero. Their
verdict was favourable to Lord Ormont. Our English General learnt
riding before he was ten years old, on the Pampas, where you ride all
day, and cook your steak for your dinner between your seat and your
saddle. He rode with his father and his uncle, Muncastle, the famous
traveller, into Paraguay. He saw fighting before he was twelve. Before
he was twenty he was learning outpost duty in the Austrian frontier
cavalry. He served in the Peninsula, served in Canada, served in India,
volunteered for any chance of distinction. No need to say much of his
mastering the picked Indian swordsmen in single combat: he knew their
trick, and was quick to save his reins when they made a dash
threatening the headstroke--about the same as disabling sails in old
naval engagements.
That was the part for the officer; we are speaking of the General. For
that matter, he had as keen an eye for the field and the moment for his
arm to strike as any Murat. One world have liked to see Murat matched
against the sabre of a wily Rajpoot! As to campaigns and strategy, Lord
Ormont's head was a map. What of Murat and Lord Ormont horse to
horse and sword to sword? Come, imagine that, if you are for
comparisons. And if Lord Ormont never headed a lot of thousands, it
does not prove he was unable. Lord Ormont was as big as Murat. More,
he was a Christian to his horses. How about Murat in that respect? Lord
Ormont cared for his men: did Murat so particularly much? And he was
as cunning fronting odds, and a thunderbolt at the charge. Why speak

of him in the past? He is an English lord, a lord by birth, and he is alive;
things may be expected of him to-morrow or next day.
Shalders here cut Matey short by meanly objecting to that.
"Men are mortal," he said, with a lot of pretended stuff, deploring our
human condition in the elegy strain; and he fell to reckoning the
English hero's age--as that he, Lord Ormont, had been a name in the
world for the last twenty-five years or more. The noble lord could be no
chicken. We are justified in calculating, by the course of nature, that his
term of activity is approaching, or has approached, or, in fact, has
drawn to its close.
"If your estimate, sir, approaches to correctness," rejoined Matey--
tellingly, his comrades thought.
"Sixty, as you may learn some day, is a serious age, Matthew
Weyburn."
Matey said he should be happy to reach it with half the honours Lord
Ormont had won.
"Excepting the duels," Shalders had the impudence to say.
"If the cause is a good one!" cried Matey.
"The cause, or Lord Ormont has been maligned, was reprehensible in
the extremest degree." Shalders cockhorsed on