Major Vigoureux Part 2

"And that's a long time, to be sure, sir. But one never knows. The Lord Proprietor might take it into his head, one o' these days, to invite you to dinner."

"Few things are less likely. And even if he did, and the worst came to the worst, I might borrow Mr. Rogers', you know," added the Commandant--and with a smile; for he stood six feet, and Mr. Rogers a bare five feet five, in their respective socks.

"He might ask you both together. 'Twould be just of a piece with his d.a.m.ned thoughtlessness."

"Hush, Archelaus!" his master commanded sternly, and reproached himself afterwards for having felt not altogether ill-pleased.

"Well, sir, I thank you kindly; and I won't deny 'twill be a comfort to go about with the lower half of me looking a bit less like a pen-wiper.

But what be I to do with the pesky things? Return 'em?"

"On no account. You might even thank him--by word of mouth--if you have not already done so."

"I haven't. To tell the truth, the pattern took me so aback at first going off.... But when you came in by the gate, there, I was turning it over in my mind that the garrison oughtn't to be beholden to a civilian----"

"Quite right, Archelaus."

"And, that bein' so, it might be dignified-like to return gift for gift. Now, the Lord Proprietor's terrible fond of bulbs; 'tis a new craze with him; and in spading over the border here I'd a-turned up a dozen or so of those queer-looking Lent-lilies you set such store by----" Sergeant Archelaus pointed towards a little heap of daffodil bulbs carelessly strewn on the up-turned soil.

These bulbs had a history.

Close on thirty years before, a certain Dutch skipper--his name is forgotten--happened to be sailing for Bordeaux with a general cargo, which included some thousands of tulips, and a few almost priceless ones, for a rich purchaser who wished to introduce tulip-culture into the Gironde. The Dutchman's vessel was a flat-bottomed galliot, fitted with lee-boards, but liable to fall away from the wind; and, encountering a strong southerly gale as he attempted to round Ushant, he was blown northward into the fogs, and, through the fogs, upon the Islands.

Against what followed, the chances were at least a thousand to one. His vessel, blind as to her whereabouts, and helpless among the tide-races, missed rock after rock, blundered her way past every sunken peril--to be sure, she was flat-bottomed, but the soundings varied so from moment to moment that the crew, after running a dozen times to the boats in the certainty of striking, fully believed themselves bewitched; until, in St. Lide's Pool, as they made seven fathoms and hoped for open water, the fog lifted suddenly, and they saw Garrison Hill right above them.

This befell them a short hour before sunset. The skipper rounded up to the wind, dropped anchor, got out a boat, and groped his way sh.o.r.eward--for the fog had descended again, even more speedily than it had lifted.

Groping his way, and still attended by his amazing good luck, the Dutchman, where he had expected rocks, came plump on a pier of hewn masonry. At the pier-head, which loomed high above them, a man struck a light and displayed a lantern; and, looking up, the crew were aware of many people standing there and chattering in the dusk--chattering in the low soft tone peculiar to the Islanders. The skipper hailed them in Dutch, and again in French, these being the only languages he spoke.

The Islanders, helping him ash.o.r.e, made signs that they could not answer, but took him and his men up the hill to the Garrison, then commanded by a Colonel Bartlemy.

Colonel Bartlemy could speak French after a fashion, and so could his excellent wife. Between them they entertained the wanderers hospitably for the s.p.a.ce of five days, at the end of which the Dutchman went his way before a clear north wind, and in charge of an Island pilot. But before departing he presented his hosts--it was all that either he could give or they would permit themselves to accept--with a quant.i.ty of remarkably fine bulbs from his cargo.

Now, possibly, being a Dutchman, he took it for granted that anyone could recognise these bulbs for what they were. But Mrs. Bartlemy did not; for she had spent the most of her life in various garrisons, which afford few opportunities for gardening. None the less, she was, for a soldier's wife, a first-rate housekeeper; and, supposing these bulbs to be onions of peculiar rarity, she forthwith issued invitations to the _elite_ of the Island, and ordered over a leg of Welsh mutton from the mainland. I will not attempt to tell of the dinner that ensued: for Miss Gabriel made the story her own, and everyone who heard her relate it after one of Garland Town's _pet.i.ts soupers_--as she frequently did by special request--declared it to be inimitable. Suffice it to say that the tulips were boiled, but not eaten.

A few bulbs, of smaller size, escaped the pot, and Mrs. Bartlemy, in her mortification, ordered the cook to throw them away, or (in the language of the Islands) to "heave them to cliff." The cook cast them out upon a bed of rubbish in a corner of the garrison garden, where by-and-by they were covered with fresh rubbish, under which they sprouted; and, next spring, lo! the midden heap had become a mound of glorious trumpet daffodils!

So they were left to blossom, refreshing the eyes of successive Commandants year after year as March came round and the March nor'-westers set their yellow bells waving against the blue sea. Major Vigoureux delighted in them--were they not his name-flower? But no one took pains to cultivate them, as no one suspected their great destiny.

They bloomed year by year, and waited. Their hour was not yet.

"By all means, Archelaus, let us do it tactfully," agreed the Commandant. "We must suppress those trousers of his at all costs. Yet I would avoid anything in the nature of a rebuff, and if you think the Lord Proprietor would be gratified, you are welcome to take him as many of the bulbs as you please. Only leave me a few; for G.o.d knows our garden has few ornaments to spare."

"I'll take 'em over to Inniscaw and thank him by word o' mouth," said Sergeant Archelaus, hopefully. "It'll save me the trouble of spelling 'trousers,' anyway."

"It would be easier, as well as more accurate," said the Commandant, pensively regarding the Sergeant's legs, "to call them trews. Not," he went on inconsequently, "that I have anything to say against the Highland Regiments. I was brigaded once for three months with the Forth-Second, and capital fellows I found them."

With a mind relieved, the Commandant walked off towards the Barracks, pausing on his way to pick up Miss Gabriel's antimaca.s.sar-waistcoat, which he had taken the precaution to leave outside the gate.

Three-quarters of an hour later he emerged in clean shirt and threadbare, but well-brushed, uniform, arrayed for Mr. and Mrs.

Fossell's whist-party. As he pa.s.sed the Garrison gate, Mrs. Treacher, who sometimes acted deputy for her husband, began to ring the six o'clock bell. He halted and waited for her to finish.

"Mrs. Treacher," he said, "can you tell me the price of flannel?"

"Flannel," answered Mrs. Treacher, "is all prices, according to quality."

"But I am talking of good ordinary flannel, fit to make up into a man's shirt."

"Then you couldn't say less than one-three-farthings, or one-and-a-ha'penny at the lowest."

"And how much would be required?"

"Good Lord!" said Mrs. Treacher. "As if that didn't all depend on the man!"

"I was thinking, Mrs. Treacher, to present your husband with one: that is to say, with the material, if you will not mind making it up."

Mrs. Treacher curtsied. "And I thank you kindly, sir, for 'tis not before he needs one, which, being under average size and the width just a yard, as you may reckon, he oughtn't to take more than three-and-a-half yards at the outside."

"Three-and-a-half at one-three-farthings--that makes--Oh, confound these fractions!" said the Commandant. "We'll make it four shillings, and you had best step down to Tregaskis' shop to-morrow and choose the stuff yourself." He counted out the money into Mrs. Treacher's hand, and left her curtseying. As he went, he jingled the few coins remaining in his breeches pocket. They amounted to two-and-seven-pence in all--and almost a week stood between him and pay-day.

CHAPTER III

THE COMMANDANT FINESSES A KNAVE

"I remember the Bartlemys perfectly," said Miss Gabriel, addressing the company as they sat around Mr. and Mrs. Fossell's dining-table and trifled with a light collation of cordial waters and ratafia biscuits--prelude to serious whist. "I carry them both in my mind's eye, though I must have been but a tiny child when he succ.u.mbed to apoplexy, and she left the Islands to reside with a married sister at Scarborough. Very poorly-off he left her. Somehow, our Commanding Officers have never contrived to save money--even in the old days, when the post was worth having."

Miss Gabriel said it lightly but pointedly, with a glance at the Commandant. The company stared at their plates and gla.s.ses. It was well-known that (as Mr. Rogers put it) Miss Gabriel "had her knife into" the patient man, and there were tongues that attributed her spitefulness to disappointment. Fifteen years ago, when Major Narcisse Vigoureux--no longer in his first youth, but still a man of handsome presence--had first arrived in the Islands to take over his command, Miss Gabriel was a not uncomely woman of thirty. _Partis_ in the Islands are few, as you may suppose. He was a bachelor, she a spinster; she had money, and he position. What wonder, then, if the Islanders expected them to make a match of it?

For some reason, the match had never come off, and although she might convince herself that the simplest reason--incompatibility--was the true one, Miss Gabriel could hardly have been unaware that the women looked upon her as one who had missed her chance, and even blamed her a little--as women always will in such cases--in a conspiracy of s.e.x acknowledging its weakness. Perhaps this made her defiant.

She was handling the Commandant truculently to-night.

"Of course," she continued, "even in those days the post--don't they say the same in England of a Deanery?--was looked upon as finishing a man's career. I don't know, for my part, the principle upon which the Horse Guards--it used to be the Horse Guards--sent Colonel Bartlemy down to us."

"By selection, ma'am," said the Commandant, still patiently, as she paused; "by selection among a number of applicants."

"I didn't want to be told that," snapped Miss Gabriel. "What I meant was, the Commander-in-Chief probably knew something of the man--had informed himself of something in his record--before sending him down to this exile."

"And a jolly good exile, too!" put in Mr. Rogers, heartily.

"It used to be," said Miss Gabriel. "This Colonel Bartlemy, for instance, was a coward. I've heard it told of him that once, during his command, a sort of mutiny broke out in the Barracks. It happened at a time when the newspapers were full of nonsense about France invading us by a sudden descent; and the noise, reaching him in the quarters where he lodged with his wife and one general maid-servant, put him in a terrible fright. He had fenced off these quarters of his for privacy, because Mrs. Bartlemy thought it would be a good deal better for the maid-servant; and they communicated with the Barracks by a staircase with a door of which he kept the key. On the first alarm he ran to this door and called through the key-hole for his orderly; but the orderly, who himself was taking part in the disturbance, did not hear. So the Colonel called up his wife and the servant, and joined them at the head of the stairs after he had slipped on his belt and sword. By this time the noise below was deafening. The Colonel, putting a brave face on it, managed to get the key into the lock and turn it. Then, as he flung the door open, he turned with a bow to his wife and said very politely, in French--for they were in the habit of talking French before the girl--'_Pa.s.sez devant, madame!_'"

"How did it end?" asked Mr. Rogers, after a guffaw.

"Oh, it turned out to be just a barrack brawl. The soldiers were always the worst-behaved lot in the Islands, and perpetually grumbling--though in those days," added Miss Gabriel, "I always understood that they were fed and clothed sufficiently."

The Commandant whitened. Mrs. Fossell, a nervous body in a cap with lilac ribbon, rose in some little fl.u.s.ter, and opined that it was almost time to cut for partners.