Traffics and Discoveries Part 35

Burgard leaned forward didactically. "The Regulations lay down that every man's capacity for command must be tested to the uttermost. We construe that very literally when we're on the 'heef.' F'r instance, any man can apply to take the command next above him, and if a man's too shy to ask, his company officer must see that he gets his chance. A sergeant is given a wing of the battalion to play with for three weeks--a month, or six weeks--according to his capacity, and turned adrift in an Area to make his own arrangements. That's what Areas are for--and to experiment in. A good gunner--a private very often--has all four company-guns to handle through a week's fight, acting for the time as the major. Majors of Guard battalions (Verschoyle's our major) are supposed to be responsible for the guns, by the way. There's nothing to prevent any man who has the gift working his way up to the experimental command of the battalion on 'heef.'

Purvis, my colour-sergeant, commanded the battalion for three months at the back of Coolgardie, an' very well he did it. Bayley 'verted to company officer for the time being an' took Harrison's company, and Harrison came over to me as my colour-sergeant. D'you see? Well, Purvis is down for a commission when there's a vacancy. He's been thoroughly tested, and we all like him. Two other sergeants have pa.s.sed that three months' trial in the same way (just as second mates go up for extra master's certificate). They have E.C. after their names in the Army List. That shows they're capable of taking command in event of war. The result of our system is that you could knock out every single officer of a Guard battalion early in the day, and the wheels 'ud still go forward, _not_ merely round. We're allowed to fill up half our commissioned list from the ranks direct. _Now_ d'you see why there's such a rush to get into a Guard battalion?"

"Indeed I do. Have you commanded the regiment experimentally?"

"Oh, time and again," Burgard laughed. "We've all had our E.C. turn."

"Doesn't the chopping and changing upset the men?"

"It takes something to upset the Guard. Besides, they're all in the game together. They give each other a fair show you may be sure."

"That's true," said Matthews. "When I went to N'Gami with my--with the half-company," he sighed, "they helped me all they knew. But it's a gift-- handling men. I found _that_ out,"

"I know you did," said Burgard softly. "But you found it out in time, which is the great thing. You see," he turned to me, "with our limited strength we can't afford to have a single man who isn't more than up to any duty--in reason. Don't you be led away by what you saw at Trials just now. The Volunteers and the Militia have all the monkey-tricks of the trade--such as mounting and dismounting guns, and making fancy scores and doing record marches; but they need a lot of working up before they can pull their weight in the boat."

There was a knock at the door. A note was handed in. Burgard read it and smiled.

"Bayley wants to know if you'd care to come with us to the Park and see the kids. It's only a Sat.u.r.day afternoon walk-round before the taxpayer.... Very good. If you'll press the b.u.t.ton we'll try to do the rest."

He led me by two flights of stairs up an iron stairway that gave on a platform, not unlike a ship's bridge, immediately above the barrelled gla.s.s roof of the riding-school. Through a ribbed ventilator I could see B Company far below watching some men who chased sheep. Burgard unlocked a gla.s.s-fronted fire-alarm arrangement flanked with dials and speaking- tubes, and bade me press the centre b.u.t.ton.

Next moment I should have fallen through the riding-school roof if he had not caught me; for the huge building below my feet thrilled to the multiplied purring of electric bells. The men in the school vanished like minnows before a shadow, and above the stamp of booted feet on staircases I heard the neighing of many horses.

"What in the world have I done?" I gasped.

"Turned out the Guard--horse, foot, and guns!"

A telephone bell rang imperiously. Burgard s.n.a.t.c.hed up the receiver:

"Yes, Sir.... _What_, Sir?... I never heard they said that," he laughed, "but it would be just like 'em. In an hour and a half? Yes, Sir. Opposite the Statue? Yes, Sir."

He turned to me with a wink as he hung up.

"Bayley's playing up for you. Now you'll see some fun."

"Who's going to catch it?" I demanded.

"Only our local Foreign Service Corps. Its C.O. has been boasting that it's _en tat de partir_, and Bayley's going to take him at his word and have a kit-inspection this afternoon in the Park. I must tell their drill-hall. Look over yonder between that brewery chimney and the mansard roof!"

He readdressed himself to the telephone, and I kept my eye on the building to the southward. A Blue Peter climbed up to the top of the flagstaff that crowned it and blew out in the summer breeze. A black storm-cone followed.

"Inspection for F.S. corps acknowledged, Sir," said Burgard down the telephone. "Now we'd better go to the riding-school. The battalion falls in there. I have to change, but you're free of the corps. Go anywhere. Ask anything. In another ten minutes we're off."

I lingered for a little looking over the great city, its huddle of houses and the great fringe of the Park, all framed between the open windows of this dial-dotted eyrie.

When I descended the halls and corridors were as hushed as they had been noisy, and my feet echoed down the broad tiled staircases. On the third floor, Matthews, gaitered and armed, overtook me smiling.

"I thought you might want a guide," said he. "We've five minutes yet," and piloted me to the sunsplashed gloom of the riding-school. Three companies were in close order on the tan. They moved out at a whistle, and as I followed in their rear I was overtaken by Pigeon on a rough black mare.

"Wait a bit," he said, "till the horses are all out of stables, and come with us. D Company is the only one mounted just now. We do it to amuse the taxpayer," he explained, above the noise of horses on the tan.

"Where are the guns?" I asked, as the mare lipped my coat-collar.

"Gone ahead long ago. They come out of their own door at the back of barracks. We don't haul guns through traffic more than we can help.... If Belinda breathes down your neck smack her. She'll be quiet in the streets.

She loves lookin' into the shop-windows."

The mounted company clattered through vaulted concrete corridors in the wake of the main body, and filed out into the crowded streets.

When I looked at the townsfolk on the pavement, or in the double-decked trams, I saw that the bulk of them saluted, not grudgingly or of necessity, but in a light-hearted, even flippant fashion.

"Those are Line and Militia men," said Pigeon. "That old chap in the top-hat by the lamp-post is an ex-Guardee. That's why he's saluting in slow-time. No, there's no regulation governing these things, but we've all fallen into the way of it somehow. Steady, mare!"

"I don't know whether I care about this aggressive militarism," I began, when the company halted, and Belinda almost knocked me down. Looking forward I saw the badged cuff of a policeman upraised at a crossing, his back towards us.

"Horrid aggressive, ain't we?" said Pigeon with a chuckle when we moved on again and overtook the main body. Here I caught the strains of the band, which Pigeon told me did not accompany the battalion on 'heef,' but lived in barracks and made much money by playing at parties in town.

"If we want anything more than drums and fifes on 'heef' we sing," said Pigeon. "Singin' helps the wind."

I rejoiced to the marrow of my bones thus to be borne along on billows of surging music among magnificent men, in sunlight, through a crowded town whose people, I could feel, regarded us with comradeship, affection--and more.

"By Jove," I said at last, watching the eyes about us, "these people are looking us over as if we were horses."

"Why not? They know the game."

The eyes on the pavement, in the trams, the cabs, at the upper windows, swept our lines back and forth with a weighed intensity of regard which at first seemed altogether new to me, till I recalled just such eyes, a thousand of them, at manoeuvres in the Channel when one crowded battleship drew past its sister at biscuit-toss range. Then I stared at the ground, overborne by those considering eyes.

Suddenly the music changed to the wail of the Dead March in "Saul," and once more--we were crossing a large square--the regiment halted.

"d.a.m.n!" said Pigeon, glancing behind him at the mounted company. "I believe they save up their Sat.u.r.day corpses on purpose."

"What is it?" I asked.

"A dead Volunteer. We must play him through." Again I looked forward and saw the top of a hea.r.s.e, followed by two mourning-coaches, boring directly up the halted regiment, which opened out company by company to let it through.

"But they've got the whole blessed square to funeralise in!" I exclaimed.

"Why don't they go round?"

"Not so!" Pigeon replied. "In this city it's the Volunteer's perquisite to be played through by any corps he happens to meet on his way to the cemetery. And they make the most of it. You'll see."

I heard the order, "Rest on your arms," run before the poor little procession as the men opened out. The driver pulled the black Flanders beasts into a more than funeral crawl, and in the first mourning-coach I saw the tearful face of a fat woman (his mother, doubtless), a handkerchief pressed to one eye, but the other rolling vigilantly, alight with proper pride. Last came a knot of uniformed men--privates, I took it --of the dead one's corps.

Said a man in the crowd beside us to the girl on his arm, "There, Jenny!

That's what I'll get if I 'ave the luck to meet 'em when my time comes."

"You an' your luck," she snapped. "'Ow can you talk such silly nonsense?"

"Played through by the Guard," he repeated slowly. "The undertaker 'oo could guarantee _that_, mark you, for all his customers--well, 'e'd monopolise the trade, is all I can say. See the horses pa.s.sagin'

sideways!"