Story

[NOTE.--This is not a fancy sketch. I got it from a clergyman who was

an instructor at Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for its truth.

--M.T.]



It was at a banquet in London in honour of one of the two or three

conspicuously illustrious English military names of this generation.

For reasons which will presently appear, I will withhold his real name

and titles, and call him Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, V.C.,

K.C.B., etc., etc., etc. What a fascination there is in a renowned name!

There say the man, in actual flesh, whom I had heard of so many thousands

of times since that day, thirty years before, when his name shot suddenly

to the zenith from a Crimean battle-field, to remain for ever celebrated.

It was food and drink to me to look, and look, and look at that demigod;

scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, the reserve, the noble

gravity of his countenance; the simple honesty that expressed itself all

over him; the sweet unconsciousness of his greatness--unconsciousness of

the hundreds of admiring eyes fastened upon him, unconsciousness of the

deep, loving, sincere worship welling out of the breasts of those people

and flowing toward him.



The clergyman at my left was an old acquaintance of mine--clergyman now,

but had spent the first half of his life in the camp and field, and as an

instructor in the military school at Woolwich. Just at the moment I have

been talking about, a veiled and singular light glimmered in his eyes,

and he leaned down and muttered confidentially to me--indicating the hero

of the banquet with a gesture,--'Privately--his glory is an accident--

just a product of incredible luck.'



This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been

Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been

greater.



Some days later came the explanation of this strange remark, and this is

what the Reverend told me.



About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military academy at

Woolwich. I was present in one of the sections when young Scoresby

underwent his preliminary examination. I was touched to the quick with

pity; for the rest of the class answered up brightly and handsomely,

while he--why, dear me, he didn't know anything, so to speak. He was

evidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and guileless; and so it was

exceedingly painful to see him stand there, as serene as a graven image,

and deliver himself of answers which were veritably miraculous for

stupidity and ignorance. All the compassion in me was aroused in his

behalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be examined again, he will be

flung over, of course; so it will be simple a harmless act of charity to

ease his fall as much as I can.



I took him aside, and found that he knew a little of Caesar's history;

and as he didn't know anything else, I went to work and drilled him like

a galley-slave on a certain line of stock questions concerning Caesar

which I knew would be used. If you'll believe me, he went through with

flying colours on examination day! He went through on that purely

superficial 'cram', and got compliments, too, while others, who knew a

thousand times more than he, got plucked. By some strangely lucky

accident--an accident not likely to happen twice in a century--he was

asked no question outside of the narrow limits of his drill.



It was stupefying. Well, although through his course I stood by him,

with something of the sentiment which a mother feels for a crippled

child; and he always saved himself--just by miracle, apparently.



Now of course the thing that would expose him and kill him at last was

mathematics. I resolved to make his death as easy as I could; so I

drilled him and crammed him, and crammed him and drilled him, just on the

line of questions which the examiner would be most likely to use, and

then launched him on his fate. Well, sir, try to conceive of the result:

to my consternation, he took the first prize! And with it he got a

perfect ovation in the way of compliments.



Sleep! There was no more sleep for me for a week. My conscience

tortured me day and night. What I had done I had done purely through

charity, and only to ease the poor youth's fall--I never had dreamed of

any such preposterous result as the thing that had happened. I felt as

guilty and miserable as the creator of Frankenstein. Here was a wooden-

head whom I had put in the way of glittering promotions and prodigious

responsibilities, and but one thing could happen: he and his

responsibilities would all go to ruin together at the first opportunity.



The Crimean war had just broken out. Of course there had to be a war, I

said to myself: we couldn't have peace and give this donkey a chance to

die before he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And

it made me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a

captaincy in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the

service before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever

have foreseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on

such green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have stood it

if they had made him a cornet; but a captain--think of it! I thought my

hair would turn white.



Consider what I did--I who so loved repose and inaction. I said to

myself, I am responsible to the country for this, and I must go along

with him and protect the country against him as far as I can. So I took

my poor little capital that I had saved up through years of work and

grinding economy, and went with a sigh and bought a cornetcy in his

regiment, and away we went to the field.



And there--oh dear, it was awful. Blunders? why, he never did anything

but blunder. But, you see, nobody was in the fellow's secret--everybody

had him focused wrong, and necessarily misinterpreted his performance

every time--consequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirations

of genius; they did honestly! His mildest blunders were enough to make a

man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cry--and rage and rave

too, privately. And the thing that kept me always in a sweat of

apprehension was the fact that every fresh blunder he made increased the

lustre of his reputation! I kept saying to myself, he'll get so high

that when discovery does finally come it will be like the sun falling out

of the sky.



He went right along up, from grade to grade, over the dead bodies of his

superiors, until at last, in the hottest moment of the battle of....

down went our colonel, and my heart jumped into my mouth, for Scoresby

was next in rank! Now for it, said I; we'll all land in Sheol in ten

minutes, sure.



The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way all over

the field. Our regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blunder

now must be destruction. At this critical moment, what does this

immortal fool do but detach the regiment from its place and order a

charge over a neighbouring hill where there wasn't a suggestion of an

enemy! 'There you go!' I said to myself; 'this is the end at last.'



And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of the hill before the

insane movement could be discovered and stopped. And what did we find?

An entire and unsuspected Russian army in reserve! And what happened?

We were eaten up? That is necessarily what would have happened in

ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. But no; those Russians argued that

no single regiment would come browsing around there at such a time. It

must be the entire English army, and that the sly Russian game was

detected and blocked; so they turned tail, and away they went, pell-mell,

over the hill and down into the field, in wild confusion, and we after

them; they themselves broke the solid Russia centre in the field, and

tore through, and in no time there was the most tremendous rout you ever

saw, and the defeat of the allies was turned into a sweeping and splendid

victory! Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy with astonishment,

admiration, and delight; and sent right off for Scoresby, and hugged him,

and decorated him on the field in presence of all the armies!



And what was Scoresby's blunder that time? Merely the mistaking his

right hand for his left--that was all. An order had come to him to fall

back and support our right; and instead he fell forward and went over the

hill to the left. But the name he won that day as a marvellous military

genius filled the world with his glory, and that glory will never fade

while history books last.



He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a man can

be, but he doesn't know enough to come in when it rains. He has been

pursued, day by day and year by year, by a most phenomenal and

astonishing luckiness. He has been a shining soldier in all our wars for

half a generation; he has littered his military life with blunders, and

yet has never committed one that didn't make him a knight or a baronet or

a lord or something. Look at his breast; why, he is just clothed in

domestic and foreign decorations. Well, sir, every one of them is a

record of some shouting stupidity or other; and, taken together, they are

proof that the very best thing in all this world that can befall a man is

to be born lucky.

























