"My father," he resumed, "would, nay, could, never have understood. I
know him. When danger came his way, it found him ready, but he did not
foresee. That was my trouble always,--I foresaw. Any peril to be
encountered, any risk to be run,--I foresaw them. I foresaw something
else besides. My father would talk in his matter-of-fact way of the
hours of waiting before the actual commencement of a battle, after the
troops had been paraded. The mere anticipation of the suspense and the
strain of those hours was a torture to me. I foresaw the possibility of
cowardice. Then one evening, when my father had his old friends about
him on one of his Crimean nights, two dreadful stories were told--one
of an officer, the other of a surgeon, who had both shirked. I was now
confronted with the fact of cowardice. I took those stories up to bed
with me. They never left my memory; they became a part of me. I saw
myself behaving now as one, now as the other, of those two men had
behaved, perhaps in the crisis of a battle bringing ruin upon my
country, certainly dishonouring my father and all the dead men whose
portraits hung ranged in the hall. I tried to get the best of my fears.
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