s.

Things were getting simply infernal. I struck out blindly for the open
country; and even as I made for the gate a shrill voice from a window
bade me keep off the flower-beds. When the gate had swung to behind me
with a vicious click I felt better, and after ten minutes along the road
it began to grow on me that some radical change was needed, that I was
in a blind alley, and that this intolerable state of things must somehow
cease. All that I could do I had already done. As well-meaning a fellow
as ever stepped was pounding along the road that day, with an exceeding
sore heart; one who only wished to live and let live, in touch with his
fellows, and appreciating what joys life had to offer. What was wanted
now was a complete change of environment. Somewhere in the world, I
felt sure, justice and sympathy still resided. There were places called
pampas, for instance, that sounded well. League upon league of grass,
with just an occasional wild horse, and not a relation within the
horizon! To a bruised spirit this seemed a sane and a healing sort of
existence. There were other pleasant corners, again, where you dived
for pearls and stabbed sharks in the stomach with your big knife.
No relations would be likely to come interfering with you when thus
blissfully occupied. And yet I did not wish--just yet--to have done with
relations entirely. They should be made to feel their position first,
to see themselves as they really were, and to wish--when it was too
late--that they had behaved more properly.

Of all professions, the army seemed to lend itself the most thoroughly
to the scheme. You enlisted, you followed the drum, you marched, fought,
and ported arms, under strange skies, through unrecorded years. At last,
at long last, your opportunity would come, when the horrors of war were
flickering through the quiet country-side where you were cradled and
bred, but where the memory of you had long been dim. Folk would run
together, clamorous, palsied with fear; and among the terror-stricken
groups would figure certain aunts. "What hope is left us?" they would
ask themselves, "save in the clemency of the General, the mysterious,
invincible General, of whom men tell such romantic tales?" And the army
would march in, and the guns would rattle and leap along the village
street, and, last of all, you--you, the General, the fabled hero--you
would enter, on your coal-black charger, your pale set face seamed by
an interesting sabre-