‘With so little of the Jesuit in him!’

‘Little of the worst:  a good deal of the best.’

‘What is the best?’

’Their training to study.  They train you to concentrate the brain upon the object of study.  And they train you to accept service:  they fit you for absolute service:  they shape you for your duties in the world; and so long as they don’t smelt a man’s private conscience, they are model masters.  Happily Patrick has held his own.  Not the Jesuits would have a chance of keeping a grasp on Patrick!  He’ll always be a natural boy and a thoughtful man.’

Jane’s features implied a gentle shudder.

‘I shake a scarlet cloak to you?’ said Philip.

She was directed by his words to think of the scarlet coat.  ’I reflect a little on the substance of things as well,’ she said.  ’Would not Patrick’s counsels have an influence?’

‘Hitherto our Patrick has never presumed to counsel his elder brother.’

‘But an officer wearing . . .’

’The uniform!  That would have to be stripped off.  There’d be an end to any professional career.’

‘You would not regret it?’

’No sorrow is like a soldier’s bidding farewell to flag and comrades.  Happily politics and I have no business together.  If the country favours me with active service I’m satisfied for myself.  You asked me for my opinions:  I was bound to give them.  Generally I let them rest.’

Could she have had the temerity?  Jane marvelled at herself.

She doubted that the weighty pair of tears had dropped for the country.  Captain Con would have shed them over Erin, and many of them.  Captain Philip’s tone was too plain and positive:  he would be a most practical unhistrionic rebel.

‘You would countenance a revolt?’ she said, striking at that extreme to elicit the favourable answer her tones angled for.  And it was instantly: 

‘Not in arms.’  He tried an explanation by likening the dissension to a wrangle in a civilised family over an unjust division of property.

And here, as he was marking the case with some nicety and difficulty, an itinerant barrel-organ crashed its tragic tale of music put to torture at the gate.  It yelled of London to Jane, throttled the spirits of the woods, threw a smoke over the country sky, befouled the pure air she loved.

The instrument was one of the number which are packed to suit all English tastes and may be taken for a rough sample of the jumble of them, where a danceless quadrille-tune succeeds a suicidal Operatic melody and is followed by the weariful hymn, whose last drawl pert polka kicks aside.  Thus does the poor Savoyard compel a rich people to pay for their wealth.  Not without pathos in the abstract perhaps do the wretched machines pursue their revolutions of their factory life, as incapable of conceiving as of bestowing pleasure:  a bald cry for pennies through the barest pretence