The Wages of Virtue Part 6

Having put on the kepi, Mikhail bundled up the uniform, struck an att.i.tude with arms akimbo, and inquired of the other--

"Do I look _very_ awful in this thing, Fedia?"

"Shut up, you little fool," replied Feodor, with a quick frown. "Try and look more like a _mujik_ in _maslianitza_,[#] and less like a young student at private theatricals. You're a Legionary now."

[#] The week before Lent, or "mad week," when all good _mujiks_ get drunk--or used to do.

When, at length, the recruits had all been fitted into uniforms, and were ready to depart, they were driven forth with the heart-felt curse and comprehensive anathema of the Sergeant-Major--

"Sweep the room clear of this offal, Corporal," quoth he. "And if thou canst make a Legionnaire's little toe out of the whole draft--thou shalt have the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour--I promise it."

"_En avant. Marche!_" bawled the Corporal, and the "blues" were led away, up flights of stairs, and along echoing corridors to their future home, their new quarters. A Legionnaire, carrying a huge earthenware jug, encountering them outside the door thereof, gave them their first welcome to the Legion.

"Oh thrice-condemned souls, welcome to h.e.l.l," he cried genially, and kicking open the door of a huge room, he liberally sprinkled each pa.s.sing recruit, murmuring as he did so--

"Le diable vous benisse."

CHAPTER II

A BARRACK-ROOM OF THE LEGION

The room which Reginald Rupert entered, with a dozen of his fellow "blues," was long and lofty, painfully orderly, and spotlessly clean.

Fifteen cots were exactly aligned on each long side, and down the middle of the floor ran long wooden tables and benches, scoured and polished to immaculate whiteness. Above each bed was a shelf on which was piled a very neat erection of uniforms and kit. To the eye of Rupert (experienced in barrack-rooms) there was interesting novelty in the absence of clothes-boxes, and the presence of hanging-cupboards suspended over the tables from the ceiling.

Evidently the French authorities excelled the English in the art of economising s.p.a.ce, as nothing was on the floor that could be accommodated above it. In the hanging cupboards were tin plates and cups and various utensils of the dinner-table.

The Englishman noted that though the Lebel rifles stood in a rack in a corner of the room, the long sword-bayonets hung by the pillows of their owners, each near a tin quart-pot and a small sack.

On their beds, a few Legionnaires lay sleeping, or sat laboriously polishing their leatherwork--the senseless, endless and detested _astiquage_ of the Legion--or cleaning their rifles, bayonets, and b.u.t.tons. Whatever else the Legionnaire is, or is not, he is meticulously clean, neat, and smart, and when his day's work is done (at four or five o'clock) he must start a half-day's work in "making _fantasie_"--in preparation for the day's work of the morrow.

Rising from his bed in the corner as the party entered, Legionary John Bull approached the Corporal in charge of the room and suggested that the English recruit should be allotted the bed between his own and that of Legionnaire Bronco, as he was of the same mother-tongue, and would make quicker progress in their hands than in those of foreigners. As the Corporal, agreeing, indicated the second bed from the window, to Rupert, and told him to take possession of it and make his _paquetage_ on the shelf above, the c.o.c.kney recruit pushed forward:

"'Ere, I'm Henglish too! I better jine these blokes."

"Qu'est-ce-qu'il dit, Jean Boule?" enquired the Corporal.

On being informed, Corporal Achille Martel allotted the fourth bed, that on the other side of the Bucking Bronco, to Recruit Higgins with an intimation that the sooner he learnt French, and ceased the use of barbarous tongues the better it would be for his welfare. The Corporal then a.s.signed berths to the remaining recruits, each between those of two old soldiers, of whom the right-hand man was to be the new recruit's guide, philosopher and friend, until he, in his turn, became a prideful, full-blown Legionary.

The young Russian who had given his name as Mikhail Kyrilovitch Malekov observed that the card at the head of the cot on his right-hand bore the inscription: "Luigi Rivoli, No. 13874, Soldat 2ieme Cla.s.se."

As he stood, irresolute, and apparently in great anxiety and perturbation, nervously opening and shutting a cartridge-pouch, his face suddenly brightened as his twin entered the room and intercepted the departing Corporal.

"_Mille pardons_, Monsieur," he said, saluting smartly and respectfully.

"But I earnestly and humbly request that you will permit me to inhabit this room in which is my brother. As we reached this door another _sous-officier_ took me and the remainder to the next room when twelve had entered here.... Alas! My brother was twelfth, and I thirteenth,"

he added volubly. "Look you, Monsieur, he is my twin, and we have never been separated yet. We shall get on much faster and better, helping each other, and be more credit to you and your room, _pet.i.t pere_."

"Sacre Dieu, and Name of a Purple Frog! Is this a scurvy and lousy beggar, whining for alms at a mosque door? And am I a G.o.d-forsaken and disgusting _pekin_ that you address me as 'Monsieur'? Name of a Pipe!

Have I no rank? Address me henceforth as Monsieur le Caporal, thou kopeck-worth of Russian."

"Oui, oui; milles pardons, Monsieur le Caporal. But grant me this favour and I and my brother will be your slaves."

"Va t'en, babillard! Rompez, jaseur!" snarled the Corporal.

But the Russian, true to type, was tenacious. Producing a five-franc piece he scratched his nose therewith, and dropping the wheedling and suppliant tone, asked the testy Corporal if he thought it likely Messieurs les Caporaux of the Seventh Company could possibly be induced to drink the health of so insignificant an object as Recruit Feodor Kyrilovitch Malekov.

"Corporals do not drink with Legionnaires," was the answer, "but doubtless Corporal Gilles of the next room will join me in a drink to the health of a worthy and promising 'blue,'" and, removing his kepi, he stretched his gigantic frame and yawned hugely as the Russian dexterously, and apparently unnoticed, slipped the coin into the kepi.

Having casually examined the lining of his kepi, Monsieur le Caporal Martel replaced it on his head, and with astounding suddenness and ferocity pounced upon an ugly, tow-haired German, and with a shout of "Out, pig! Out of my beautiful room! Thy face disfigures it," he hunted him forth and bestowed him upon the neighbouring Corporal, M.

Auguste Gilles, together with a promise of ten bottles of Madame la Cantiniere's best, out of the thirty-and-five which the Russian's five-franc piece would purchase.

In a moment the Russian had opened negotiations with the Spaniard who had taken the bed next but one to that of Mikhail.

Like all educated Russians, Feodor Kyrilovitch was an accomplished linguist, and, while speaking French and English idiomatically, could get along very comfortably in Spanish, Italian, and German.

A very few minutes enabled him to make it clear to the Spaniard that an exchange of beds would do him no harm, and enrich him by a two-franc piece.

"No hay de que, Senor. Gracias, muchas gracias," replied the Spaniard.

"En seguida, con se permiso," and transferred himself and his belongings to the berth vacated by the insulted and dispossessed German.

Meanwhile, Reginald Rupert, with soldierly prompt.i.tude, lost no time in setting about the brushing and arrangement of his kit, gathering up, as he did so, the pearls of local wisdom that fell from the lips of his kindly mentor, whose name and description he observed to be "Legionnaire John Bull, No. 11867, Soldat 2ieme Cla.s.se."

Having shown his pupil the best and quickest way of folding his uniform in elbow-to-finger-tip lengths, and so arranging everything that he could find it in the dark, and array himself _en tenue de campagne d'Afrique_ in ten minutes without a light, he invited him to try his own hand at the job.

"Now you try and make that '_paquetage_ of the Legion,'" observed the instructor, "and the sooner you learn to make it quickly, the better.

As you see, you have no chest for your kit as you had in the British Army, and so you keep your uniform on your shelf, _en paquetage_, for tidiness and smartness, without creases. The Legionnaire is as _chic_ and particular as the best trooper of the crackest English cavalry-corps. We look down on the _piou-piou_ from a fearful height, and swagger against the _Cha.s.seur d'Afrique_ himself. I wish to G.o.d we had spurs, but there's no cavalry in the Legion--though there are kinds of Mounted-Rifle Companies on mules, down South. I miss spurs d.a.m.nably, even after fourteen years of foot-slogging in the Legion. You can't really swagger without spurs--not that the women will look at a Legionary in any case, or the men respect him, save as a fighter. But you can't swing without spurs."

"No," agreed Rupert, "I was just thinking I should miss them, and it'll take me some time to get used to a night-cap, a neck-curtained kepi, a knapsack, and a steel bayonet-scabbard."

"You'll appreciate the first when you sleep out, and the second when you march, down South. The nights are infernally cold, and the days appallingly hot--and yet sunstroke is unknown in the Legion. Some put it down to wearing the overcoat to march in. The steel scabbard is bad--noisy and heavy. The knapsack is the very devil on the march, but it's the one and only place in the world in which you can keep a photo, letter, book, or sc.r.a.p of private property, besides spare uniform and small kit. You'll soon learn to pack it, to stow underclothing in the haversack, and to know the place for everything, so that you can get from bed to barrack-square, fully equipped and accoutred in nine minutes from the bugle.... And don't, for Heaven's sake, lose anything, for a spiteful N.C.O. can send you to your death in Biribi--that's the Penal Battalion--by running you in two or three times for 'theft of equipment.' Lost kit is regarded as stolen kit, and stolen kit is sold kit (to a court-martial), and the penalty is six months with the Zephyrs. It takes a good man to survive that.... If you've got any money, try and keep a little in hand, so that you can always replace missing kit. The fellows here are appalling thieves--of uniform. It is regarded as a right, natural and proper thing to steal uniforms and kit, and yet we'd nearly kill a man who stole money, tobacco, or food. The former would be 'decorating' yourself, the latter disgracing yourself.

We've some queer beasts here, but we're a grand regiment."

The disorderly heap of garments having become an exceedingly neat and ingenious little edifice, compact, symmetrical, and stable, Rupert's instructor introduced the subject of that bane of the Legionary's life--the eternal _astiquage_, the senseless and eternal polishing of the black leather straps and large cartridge-pouches.

"This stuff looks as though it had been left here by the Tenth Legion of Julius Caesar, rather than made for the Foreign Legion," he remarked.

"Let's see what we can make of it. Watch me do this belt, and then you can try the cartridge-cases. Don't mind firing off all the questions you've got to ask, meanwhile."

"Thanks. What sort of chaps are they in this room?" asked Rupert, seating himself on the bed beside his friendly preceptor, and inwardly congratulating himself on his good luck in meeting, on the threshold of his new career, so congenial and satisfactory a bunk-mate.

"Very mixed," was the reply. "The fellow on the other side of your berth is an American, an _ex_-U.S.A. army man, miner, lumber-jack, tramp, cow-boy, bruiser, rifle and revolver trick-shooter, and my very dear friend, one of the whitest men I ever met, and one of the most amusing. His French conversation keeps me alive by making me laugh, and he's learning Italian from a twopenny dictionary, and a Travellers'

Phrase Book, the better to talk to Carmelita. The next but one is a Neapolitan who calls himself Luigi Rivoli. He used to be a champion Strong Man, and music-hall wrestler, acrobat, and juggler. Did a bit of lion-taming too, or, at any rate, went about with a show that had a cageful of mangy performing lions. He is not really very brave though, but he's a most extraordinary strong brute. Quite a millionaire here too, for Carmelita gives him a whole franc every day of his life."

"What made him enlist then?" asked Rupert, carefully watching the curious _astiquage_ methods, so different from the pipe-clay to which he was accustomed.