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Updated: June 10, 2025
They walked together a good minute without speaking, Soames with his mousing, mincing step, and old Jolyon upright and using his umbrella languidly as a walking-stick. They turned presently into comparative quiet, for old Jolyon's way to a second Board led him in the direction of Moorage Street. Then Soames, without lifting his eyes, began: "I've had this letter from Bosinney.
'The eagle, towering in his pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed. This is the man who six months ago, perhaps, thought that he and Cecil were to rule England together, while all else were the puppets whose wires they pulled. 'The Lord hath taken him up and dashed him down; and by such means, too, and on such a charge! Betraying his country to Spain!
How could he fall, when his soul abhorred circumstances which render a fall possible a man cannot fall off the floor! That slight superciliousness of his, combined with an air of mousing amongst precedents, was in his favour too a man would not be supercilious unless he knew!
Soames dimly understood. Well, if it helped her, let her keep it thrumming on all night! And, mousing back through the fruit garden, he regained the verandah. Though he meant to go in and speak to her now, he still hesitated, not knowing what to say, trying hard to recall how it felt to be thwarted in love. He ought to know, ought to remember and he could not!
If the owner of the house should be foolish enough to be up so early, or entirely take leave of his senses, and ask him why he was mousing about there, he flatters himself he is just the child to kick him. Indeed he feels inclined to flap his wings and crow. He is very proud. He is a man, he has a beard as black as the ace of spades, is full dressed, and the world is before him.
"What's the matter with so-and-so?" would ask a mousing neighbor. "He's sick," ran the laconic reply. "Goin' to die?" one daring querist ventured further. "Some time," said the doctor. But though he assumed a right to combat thus the outer world, no one was gentler with a sick man or with those about him in their grief.
Have you come out mousing like an owl? Ha! ha! and you hear the nightingale singing, speaking in the Gentile manner," and clapping her hands she lifted up a full rich voice. "Dyal o pani repedishis, M'ro pirano hegedishis." "What does that mean, Chaldea?" "It is an Hungarian song, and means that while the stream flows I hear the violin of my love. Kara taught me the ditty."
A fact long prepared beforehand; which, if it is a peaceably received one, must have been acquiesced in, judged to be "best," by the poor mousing owls, intent only to have a large balance at their banker's and keep a whole skin.
Can there be anything more contemptible, more laughable, more utterly and hopelessly absurd, than an old and ugly man declaring his unrequited passion for a woman who might be his granddaughter? Is he not like a hoary old owl, who leaves his mousing to perch upon one leg and hoot love ditties at the evening star, or screech out amorous sonnets to the maiden moon?"
Not that in any sense he is a protector, for I doubt whether he has the heart to kill a mouse. However, I saw him catch and eat the first butterfly of the season, and trust that the germ of courage thus manifest may develop, with age, into efficient mousing.
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