"According to the Peace Society," he answered, with a quiet air of
courteous deference; "perhaps you belong to it?"
"No, indeed," answered Rachel, rather indignantly, "I think war the
great purifier and ennobler of nations, when it is for a good and great
cause; but I think education ought to protest against confounding mere
love of combat with heroism."
"Query, the true meaning of the word?" he said, leaning back.
"Heros, yes from the same root as the German herr," readily responded
Rachel, "meaning no more than lord and master; but there can be no
doubt that the progress of ideas has linked with it a much nobler
association."
"Progress! What, since the heroes were half divine!"
"Half divine in the esteem of a people who thought brute courage
godlike. To us the word maintains its semi-divinity, and it should
be our effort to associate it only with that which veritably has the
god-like stamp."
"And that is--?"
"Doing more than one's duty," exclaimed Rachel, with a glistening eye.
"Very uncomfortable and superfluous, and not at all easy," he said, half
shutting his already heavy eyes.
"Easy, no, that's the beauty and the glory--"
"Major Sherborne and Captain Lester in the drawing room, my lady,"
announced Coombe, who had looked infinitely cheered since this military
influx.
"You will come with me, Grace," said Fanny, rising. "I dare say you had
rather not, Rachel, and it would be a pity to disturb you, Alick."
"Thank you; it would be decidedly more than my duty."
"I am quite sorry to go, you are so amusing," said Fanny, "but I suppose
you will have settled about heroism by the time we come out again, and
will tell me what the boys ought to play at."
Rachel's age was quite past the need of troubling herself at being
left tete-a-tete with a mere lad like this; and, besides, it was an
opportunity not to be neglected of giving a young carpet knight a lesson
in true heroism. There was a pause after the other two had moved off.
Rachel reflected for a few moments, and then, precipitated by the fear
of her audience falling asleep, she exclaimed-"No words have been more basely misused than hero and heroine. The one
is the mere fighting animal whose strength or fortune have borne him
through some more than ordinary danger, the other is only the subject of
an adventure, perfectly irrespective of her conduct in it."
"Bathos attends all high words," he said, as she paused, chiefly to see
whether he was awake, and not like her dumb playfellow of old.
"This is not their natural bathos but their misuse. They ought to be
reserved for those who in any department have passed the limits to
which the necessity of their position constrained them, and done acts of
self-devotion for the good of others. I will give you an instance, and
from your own profession, that you may see I am not prejudiced, besides,
the hero of it is past praise or blame."