But this is only half the man. In ordinary talk he is
quite different. He has the Celtic sensitiveness and humour. He is an
artist. His manner among friends is extraordinarily winning and
sympathetic, and his grave melancholy face has a way of breaking into a
most infectious laugh. Altogether, what with his tall person, dark
determined face, his fierceness and gentleness, and the general air of
the devil about him, you are not surprised to find that no soldier's
name is more common in men's mouths out here than Mike Rimington's. You
might fit Marmion's lines to him well enough--
"His square-turned joints and length of limb
Show him no carpet knight so trim,
But in close fight a warrior grim."
He ought to have lived five hundred years ago and dressed in chain-mail
and led out his lances to plunder and foray. As it is he does his best
even in the nineteenth century. Picturesque is the word that best
describes him. He makes every one else look hopelessly commonplace. His
men admire him immensely, like him a good deal, and fear him a little.
Generals in command sometimes find him, I fancy, a bit of a handful,
that is, if their policy is at all a backward one. But most people watch
him and talk of him with a certain interest, and whatever their opinions
or ideas of him may be, one feels sure that none who have once met will
easily forget him.
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