The Making Of A Novelist Part 2

We steamed away next day in the _Apollo_, bound for Cork. We had a rough pa.s.sage, and the depot sergeant took me into his private cabin and cheered me with a gla.s.s of whisky, the first I had ever tasted. He began, when he had thus softened my heart, to try the bargain about the suit of clothes, and produced a set of garments the like of which I do not think I ever saw.

'You'll not be allowed to keep these,' he explained, fingering me all over to test the quality of the cloth I wore. 'You'll be in regimentals in a day or two, and it'll make no difference to you.'

One of the officers of the vessel looked in whilst this business was going on and broke in gruffly, 'You join your regiment looking like a gentleman, young man. Your officers won't think any the worse of you for going in decent. d.a.m.n it all, sergeant, what d'ye want to spoil the lad's prospects for?'

So a second time the suit was saved; but it went a week later to an old soldier who was leaving the regiment and whom it fitted to a hair. He was to leave a certain portion of his kit behind for me, which, as he a.s.sured me, would be of the utmost use; but he sold such articles as belonged to him to the men in his own barrack-room that evening, and decamped without seeing me again.

The stormy pa.s.sage ended delightfully amidst the quiet beauties and serene shelter of the Cove of Cork. I have seen a great many of the world's show-places since 1865, and I dare say that my inexperience counted for much; but I cannot recall any natural spectacle which afforded me a more genuine delight. It was the morning of the 30th of May. The sun was just rising, and the roofs and spires of the city were outlined against a lucent belt of sky. Spike Island lay green and smiling in the middle of the cove; and on either side, on the emerald slopes, white villas were dotted here and there. The whole scene looked very sweet and pure and homelike, and there were certain thoughts in my own mind which made the view memorable.

We were all bundled up to the Cat's Hill Barracks, and there held over Sunday. My companions melted away unregarded, and I travelled down to Cahir under the charge of a decent old fellow who did not try to buy my clothes, but spent a good deal of time in exhorting me to write to my friends and beg their pardon for having made a fool of myself.

'Yell be doing it late,' he said, 'and ye may as well be doing it soon.'

I was quite lonely and sore enough to have taken the advice, and military glory looked a long way off; but a silly pride withheld me, and I pretended to feel well satisfied with my prospects and surroundings.

When I came to understand things a little I could see that the regiment was in a splendid state of discipline and efficiency. It had not been so a few years before, when the Lieutenant Robinson episode at Birmingham had brought the command of Colonel Bentinck into grave disrepute.

Lieutenant-Colonel Shute, on whom the actual charge of the regiment devolved, set to work to bring cosmos out of chaos; and did it, though it took him a day or two of very uphill work. I know more of what a regiment should be than I did then, and I do not ask a firmer or a more judicious discipline. The men were enthusiastically loyal to their colonel, and believed in him as if he had been a sort of deity. I am persuaded that they would have gone anywhere and have done anything for him. There is nothing the British soldier respects like justice, and he likes it none the less if it is a little stern. We all had a holy dread of the colonel, though he was not a bit more of a martinet than any good officer should be; and his wife, who had a habit of giving autographed Prayer Books to the men, was regarded with a genuine affection.

I found the men, in the main, very good fellows indeed. Of course there were all sorts among them. Many were well bred and well educated, and one or two might have been met without surprise in almost any society.

Some, again, were thorough-going blackguards, and others, who were among the most popular and the best soldiers, were incurably rackety and undisciplined. One man, who had thrice won his stripes as full corporal, was for the third time broken and reduced to the ranks during my first month of service. He would keep away from drink for two or three years at a time, and then in a night would undo all the results of hard work and self-denial. Take the men in the main, and it would be difficult to find a better lot; but the petty officers seemed to make it the business of their lives to put the heaviest of burdens on the shoulders of any promising recruit. They were none of them very well educated, and I suppose that it was only natural that they should fear the advancement of a youngster better tutored than themselves, and should do their best to keep him down. One only found this disposition amongst the younger non-coms.--men who had not held their places long enough to grow used to the dignity of rank.

There is, or was in my time, a soldiers' proverb, 'As nasty as a new-made corporal,' With one exception the sergeant-majors were good fellows and popular with their men. I shall not give the name of the exception, for he may be still alive; but he was commonly known as 'The Pig,' and he deserved his t.i.tle. There was no meanness and no denial of military etiquette of which he would not be guilty to get a man into trouble. One badgered private a.s.saulted him violently with a pitchfork, and suffered two years' imprisonment for that misdemeanour. 'The Pig'

was quite uncured by this experience; and one night, prowling round the barrack-rooms after 'lights out' to see if he could find an after-dark smoker, he was a.s.sailed with a tremendous shower of highlows from every quarter of the room. The cavalry highlow, well aimed and low, as Count Billy Considine said about the decanter, may be made a very effective missile, and its powers of offence are not diminished by the fact that it pretty often carries a spur in the heel of it This event was spoken of with bated breath about the regiment for a day or two, but nothing came of it 'The Pig' was by no means sure of his popularity with his superiors; and there is an admirable and most trustworthy military tradition to the effect that no good officer is ever a.s.saulted by his men.

IV

The Fourth Royal Irish prided themselves particularly, and not without reason, on the smart and soldierlike aspect of the regiment Recruits were looked on with a jealous eye, and a gawky or loutish fellow was received with open disfavour. While we were at Cahir a couple of young fishermen from the North of Ireland joined. They came in sea-boots, pilot-cloth trousers, and knitted jerseys; and they were for a while objects of derision. I dare say one story is remembered in the regiment still. They were sent into the riding-school before they had had time to get their regimentals. It is no easy business for any unaccustomed person to mount a saddled horse without the aid of stirrups, and the young sailors in their huge sea-boots were at a double disadvantage.

'I can't get aboard this here craft nohow, Captain,' said one of them to old Barron, the riding drill. I shall never forget his expression of contempt and scorn as he saw the young men ignominiously hoisted into the saddle. At the first order to trot the fishermen hung on desperately to saddle and headstall.

'Jack,' said Barron, wrinkling his red nose in disdain, 'look out, or you'll be overboard!'

'Not me,' says Jack; 'not so long as the bloomin' riggin' holds.'

The sea-going brethren turned out very smart soldiers later on; but within a month of their arrival there came about the most hopeless specimen I can remember to have seen. His name was Sullivan, though he p.r.o.nounced it Soolikan, and he was an embodiment of every awkwardness and stupidity. He was a shambling, flat-footed, weak-kneed, round-shouldered youth, and the Fourth asked with amazement how on earth the doctors had been induced to pa.s.s him. So far as I remember, he never learned anything. The various drills laboured at him like galley-slaves, but never succeeded in teaching him the difference between 'port arms'

and 'carry arms.' When he had been diligently instructed in the sword exercise, he asked the sergeant what was the use of it all. 'While I was going through that,' says he, 'some b.l.o.o.d.y-minded Russian 'd be choppin'

me head off.' It was his idea that a soldier was supposed to go through the sword exercise in face of the enemy; and the notion that it was simply intended to give dexterity in the use of the weapon never occurred to him.

There was never anything in the world more hopeless than the attempt to teach Soolikan to ride. Of course he was never trusted in the _manege_; but he tumbled about on the tan of the riding-school in an astonishing manner, breaking no bones and incurring, somehow or other, no sort of damage. Every morning the recruits led their horses into the school and mounted there, and every morning old Barron addressed his _bete noire_ in the same words, 'Pick a soft place, Sullivan.' It was all very well so long as the ride circled at a walk at the lower end of the school But then came the order, 'Go large!' and shortly afterwards the long drawling command, 'Tr-r-o-o-o-t!'

The horses, which were old stagers and knew the words of command far better than their riders, started at the beginning of the note; and before the call had well ended the brisk impressive 'Halt!' would snap across it like a pistol-shot. 'Pick up Sullivan, somebody!' The luckless man, after more than three months' lessons, came to me one morning in triumph and told me with a broad grin, 'I didn't fall, off the day,' He was recognised from the first as incorrigible, and when he had spent but four months in the regiment he disappeared. It was darkly whispered in the barrack-rooms that he had been told to go, and that he had been bribed with a ten-pound note to desert the regiment. I dare not mention names; but I think I could lay my hand on the gallant officer who went to this expense for the credit of the corps.

I suppose the School Boards have done much within the last score of years to minimise the ma.s.s of popular ignorance; but in '65 one found here and there an amazing corner of mental darkness amongst the rank-and-file of a dandy regiment like the Fourth. There was a great hulking fellow named Gardiner, who was boasting one day that he could carry twice his own weight He was told that he could not so much as lift his own, and was persuaded into a two-handled hamper, in which he made herculean efforts to lift himself. There was another man who received with perfect gravity the chaffing statement of a comrade, to the effect that he had shot a wood-pigeon at the North Pole, and that the bird had fallen on the needle on the top of the Pole, and had frozen so hard that it was impossible to remove it.

'Ye know the song,' said the humourist, "True as the needle to the pole." There's no gettin' the needle out of the Pole, and now there's no gettin' the pigeon off the needle.'

The man for whose benefit the narrative was told smoked his pipe stolidly, and answered, 'Begorra, but it must be cold up there!'

Some of the men had odd ideas about the uses to which learning should be put. One came to me on a Sunday afternoon bearing a Bible, with a request that I would find for him and read to him all the indelicate pa.s.sages. I met this proposal with so loud a negative, and heaped such invective on the head of its author, that the corporal of the room, who was smoking a tranquil pipe outside, came in to find out what was the matter, and, being satisfied, fell to beating the man about the head with a boot. From the person thus chastised I heard no more of the matter; but I learned enough from others to know that my refusal had not helped to make me popular. There was a tacit sense to the effect that I was not a friendly fellow--that I was not willing to share the results of my reading with the less favoured.

At this distance of time I can write dispa.s.sionately; but for many years I had recollections of petty tyrannies which made my blood boil. There was a lanky youth, four or five months older in the regiment than myself, who was related to one of the sergeant-majors, and who was, of course, booked by his relative for promotion. It was never, so far as I can learn, a part of army etiquette, but it was a common practice at that time, to steal the belongings of a new arrival, and in that way to eke out a deficiency in the kit of the plunderer. My valise had not been served out to me a week before it was denuded of one-half its contents, and I was reduced to a draft of one penny a day for pocket-money until such time as the depredations were made good. The sergeant-major's nephew was found in the act of pipeclaying a pair of gauntlet gloves which bore my number, and the immediate consequence of this was a stand-up fight in the riding-school in the presence of some fifty or sixty of the men and two or three officers who looked on from the gallery. I came out more than conqueror and recovered the stolen property; but the lanky young man was made lance-corporal next week, and it became part of his duty to instruct me in military exercises in which I was far more proficient than himself. It became a regular habit of his to keep me at work while the rest of the squad stood at ease, and he had a vocabulary which, though limited and unoriginal, was as offensive as can easily be conceived.

He applied to me at last so vile an epithet that, in the heat of the moment, I forgot that I had a sabre in my hand, and, hitting out straight from the shoulder, I landed him on the mouth with the guard of the weapon. This, of course, was flat mutiny, and before I knew where I was I was seized from behind, the sabre whirled in the air, and I was lying all abroad with a sprained wrist. Then I was solemnly marched to the guardroom, and there taken in charge to await an interview with the colonel in the morning.

One of the men on guard had borrowed from the regimental library a copy of Charles Reades 'It is Never too Late to Mend,' and I read that masterpiece all the afternoon and as long into the night as the waning light would allow. The guard-room bed, with its sloping board and wooden pillow, made no very luxurious sleeping-place, and I was up at daylight to finish the most absorbing and enchanting story I had ever, until then, encountered. The book retains a great portion of its old charm and power until this day for me, but at that time it shut out everything; and though, for aught I knew to the contrary, I might be sentenced to be flogged or shot, I resigned myself to the spell of the story as completely as if the future had been altogether clear. The colonel was rather dreadful when the time came, and I remember one axiom which I got from him in the first three minutes of our interview.

'Well, what have you to say for yourself?'

'The fact is, sir,' I answered, 'this man has been most abominably insolent.'

'Nonsense,' said the colonel; 'a private can be insolent to his superior; a superior cannot be insolent to a private.'

I doubt whether the gallant colonel would have felt inclined to sustain that thesis in the House of Commons, of which a.s.sembly he afterwards became a popular and honoured member; but I dare say it did very well as an orderly-room apothegm. It had to come out, however, that the newly-made lance-corporal and I had had a fight a week or so before the date of his promotion, and that I had come out uppermost. I spoke of the corporal's language, but declined to repeat it One of the squad, who was called in evidence, was less particular, and the colonel, in effect, read the young non-com, a dreadful lesson and committed me to cells for ten days, giving orders that I was not to be disgraced--by which was meant that I was not to receive the prison crop which is made to mark the ordinary turbulent soldier. From that time care was taken that the lanky youth no longer had me in charge; but we used to scowl at each other when we pa.s.sed, and for a year or two after my return to civil life I cherished a warm hope that I might meet him and repeat in his society the exercise I had so sweetly relished in the riding-school.

After this episode the crowd was down upon me. It was felt that I had triumphed, and it was felt that no recruit had a right to triumph over any officer, however young or however lowly placed. Even a lance-corporal must be respected, or it was clear that the service was going to the devil. A brace of sergeants, with whom I had been none too much of a favourite already, laid themselves out to get me into trouble, and the plan they adopted was delightfully simple and easy. It is the rule on retiring from the _manege_ to make the grooming of one's horse the first duty, though an old soldier will take the precaution on wet or muddy days to run an oily rag rapidly over the burnished portions of the horse's fittings in the first instance. This is a labour-saving practice and is almost universally followed. But I saw one of my enemies with a sidelong eye upon me, and tackled my horse at once. In two minutes his confederate was round.

'What the ----' (any competent person who knows barrack life can fill in the blank) 'do you mean by letting your bridoon and stirrup-irons lie rusting here? Put 'em in oil at once.'

Number Two, having delivered this order, went away, clothed with curses as with a garment, and back came Number One.

'Now, what the ---- (break to be filled as before, for these people have no sense of style or invention) 'do you mean by leaving your horse to stand and shiver in that beastly lather? A nice bargain the Queen made when she gave a bob for you!'

This form of insult is traditional, but at first hearing it has power to gall. The discovery that it is no more than a formula takes off its edge. Back to the horse, to be again a.s.sailed by Number Two for not having obeyed the order about the bridoon and stirrup-irons. Back to them, and then the last scene in the comedy, in which, under a charge of neglecting to groom my horse in spite of repeated warnings, I was marched straight to the orderly-room, there to appear before the colonel.

I boiled over in his presence and denounced the little conspiracy.

The colonel was something of a martinet, but he was justice incarnate.

Witnesses were called from the stable; my story was made good; and as I stood in the ante-room adjusting my forage-cap I heard the beginning of a tongue-walking which those non-commissioned officers were not likely to forget.

'If you dare to bully my recruits again,' said the colonel, 'I'll break the pair of you. I won't have my recruits bullied.'

I smiled at this; but I was not allowed to enjoy a further triumph. The orderly sergeant wrathfully ordered me away, and I went back to my duty.

From that hour any question of comfort in the regiment was, of course, over, and it would take a volume to tell the history of the shifts and dodges which made life unbearable; though, of course, that history would be worth neither the writing nor the reading. Most of the officers were invariably kind and considerate; but there was one whom I never forgave until I learned, years afterwards, that he was dead. It was my habit to think and believe of him that he was the stupidest person that ever sat upon the magisterial bench in any capacity, civil or military. A wider experience of the world has modified that opinion, but he deserves a place in this record for all that.

He was a pale-faced man, with a slight lisp; and the men despised him because he had not the nerve even to handle them on church parade without priming himself beforehand. I had been vaccinated by virtue of a general order, and in a while my arm became swollen and very painful.

I stuck to duty as long as I could, and at last presented myself on hospital parade to ask to be excused. The doctor, for some reason, was absent, and, failing his order, I was compelled to join the ride in the _manege_. It was a beastly morning, and the field was a mere bog. We were splashed to the very b.u.t.tons of our forage-caps, and the horses were loaded with mud to the flaps of the saddles. I was tired and faint enough before the ride was over, but my poor beast had to be groomed on the return to stables, and I must needs set to work upon him. It was all no good. I might as well have tried to carry him as to groom him, and I represented my case to a non-commissioned officer, who straightway ran me in. I pa.s.sed the night in the guardroom, chilled and wet, and now and then light-headed. Had I been at head-quarters the colonel would undoubtedly have sent me to the infirmary, which was the proper place for me. The lisping captain sent me to the cells.

'Ma-an,' he said, in a drawl which half the regiment used to loathe and imitate, 'what have you to tha-ay?'

I explained my case, and whilst I did so he read something which lay on the table before him. When I had done he said, with his finicking lisp, 'Seven days' cells, hard labour.' The old regimental sergeant happened to be there, and for an instant arrested judgment.

'I beg your pardon, sir, the man is really unfit to perform hard labour.'

'Then,' said the Solon, 'in that case let him have forty-eight hours'

solitary confinement.'