VC - A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea Part 9

'Here is good-bye, dear,' she said. 'Papa is coming.'

'Good-bye,' he said softly. 'Good-bye. G.o.d bless you.'

'G.o.d bless you, too,' said Irene. She held out her little gloved hand to him, and he took it in his own. She looked bravely into his eyes, and they spoke their last farewell without a sign of tremor.

'This,' said the General, advancing as Polson turned away, 'is the young fellow of whom I have been speaking. Polson, this is your commanding officer, Colonel Stacey.' Polson raised his cap and bowed civilian fashion.

'Ah!' said the jolly colonel, turning his red face and twinkling eyes on the recruit.

'You are Polson Jervase? Joined this morning, eh? I hear an excellent account of you. Try to deserve it. I shall remember you. Good morning.'

But as Polson saluted again, and turned to go, the General seized him by the hand and shook it warmly.

'We must all face the fortune of war, my lad,' he said. 'The best of good luck go with you. If you hear of me out yonder, as you may, don't forget to report yourself. Good-bye.'

There were a good many eyes at the barrack windows, and the minds of many dragoons were inspired with wonder. For a General and a Waterloo veteran was a personage, and the daughter of the same was a personage, and it was out of the common for a newly-joined recruity to engage in intimate talk with the like of them for half an hour together, and to be shaken hands with by the veteran, and saluted as if he were an officer by the veteran's coachman, and personally introduced to 'Old Stayce'

into the bargain.

And amazement sat on many foreheads when the carriage rolled away, and the General stood up to wave his hat to the recruity, and the lady stood up to wave her hand, and the recruity, unconscious of the interest he excited, waved the shabby old sealskin cap in answer until the equipage was ringingly saluted at the gate, and swung swiftly out of sight.

And then, it was over. Oh, it was all over, and one manly heart was sore and cold. The new recruity stood there planted in the barrack square, as innocent of his surroundings as if he had been asleep, and mechanically filled and lit his pipe, and stood on with his chin sunk upon his breast, scarcely aware of his own thoughts, and as yet realising little but solitude and an ache in the doleful middle of it. But a warmth stole into the cold. When everything was said and done, there was one thing left. Irene loved him. Loved him! How sweet and sacred a wonder. Yet her own dear lips had told him that she would have been proud and happy to be his wife, and that nothing should change her. And she had given him an ambition. The lofty and inspiring words were not yet written, but their purport thrilled him, as it thrilled many who went out to fight and bleed for a cause which may not have been wholly worthy of their devotion, and yet in a sense was worthy because they believed in it with all their hearts and souls. For, after all, what is it but the purpose which enn.o.bles action? If the greatest Englishman since Shakespeare had not yet given Polson Jervase the words in which to speak his thought, it lightened his breast all the same.

I wake to the higher aims Of a land that has lost for a little her l.u.s.t of gold, And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames, Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told; And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll'd, Tho' many a light shall darken, and many shall weep For those that are crush'd in the clash of jarring claims, Yet G.o.d's just wrath shall be wreak'd on a giant liar; And many a darkness into the light shall leap, And shine in the sudden making of splendid names, And n.o.ble thought be freer under the sun.

And the heart of a people beat with one desire; For the peace, that I deem'd no peace, is over and done, And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep, And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.

So thought Polson Jervase, and so thought hundreds of valiant men who were ready to lay down their lives in a quarrel which the years have proved unprofitable.

But a voice awoke the recruity from his reverie--a voice of authority which asked with a most unnecessary emphasis what the blank, blank he meant by skulking there, when he knew conventionally well that he had been conventionally well ordered to the quartermaster's stores to get his conventional kit. The recruit was not accustomed to hear himself addressed in this manner, and his earliest impulse was to hit the pug nose of the person who accosted him, but he remembered himself in time, and bethinking him of the wise man's saying, that a soft answer turneth away wrath, he asked meekly where he should go. Then the Sergeant, who was so straitly trousered and jacketted that he pranced in his going, ordered him to follow his nose, adding that if he conventionally well supposed that because a conventional General in a conventional carriage came to see him off, he was ent.i.tled to shirk his conventional duties, he was conventionally well in error.

'I say, Sergeant,' said Polson, turning to face his conductor, 'that's a filthy bad habit. If you want to be respected, drop it.'

The Sergeant went as scarlet as his stable-jacket, and said that any conventional recruit had conventionally well _got_ to respect _him_ any conventional how.

'My dear sir, no,' said Polson. 'It's quite impossible to respect a man who talks like a foul-mouthed parrot.'

The Sergeant walked like a man astounded and said no more, and Polson likewise held his peace. They were both quietly businesslike whilst Polson got his kit served out to him, and by the time this work was over, the dinner hour had arrived. He was told off to a mess in a long barrack-room, in which his brother recruits were quartered, under the charge of an old soldier. Some of these new comrades were fresh from the plough, and some were the rowdy refuse of the town; one wore a miner's flannels, and another was a weedy youth from a shop-counter, who had a higher opinion of himself than others were likely to form.

The speech of every man jack of them was like the exhalation of a cesspool, and the newest of Her Majesty's hired servants sat in a grim wrath and loathing, seeing that he had chosen these for his life companions. The meal was plentiful, and not bad of its kind, but it was dirtily served, and asked for long custom or an appet.i.te of more than average keenness. Our recruit had neither the one nor the other, but he remembered his promise to Irene. He had undertaken to meet his fate cheerfully, and the fare was part of his fate. He would have no re-pinings. The food was honest and wholesome, and he would probably learn to be eager for worse before the war was over. So he, as it were, squared his shoulders at his trencher, and was just ready to fall to, when one of the plough-tail gentry sitting just opposite let fall a speech which would have turned the stomach of a decent hog, if he had happened to understand it. Polson's heart maddened within him, and he smote his fist upon the unclothed table so that the plates of chipped enamel iron danced from end to end on it.

'You filthy clodpole!' he said, rising from his place and thrusting a prognathous jaw and blazing eyes half-way across the table. 'Speak like that again in my hearing, and I'll give you such a hiding as you never had since you were born.'

'And sarve him right, begorra,' said the man at the head of the table.

'It's sick I am of all the dirty stuff I've to listen to--An' dese boys is 'listed for de war, and dere's not wan of 'em knows he mayn't be stiff on de field in tree or four monts' time. An' be way of makin'

ready for a soldier's end an' a sudden meetin' wid his G.o.d, dey're chewin' blasphaymious conversation from _reveille_ to lights out, so dey are.'

'Thank you,' said Polson, and so sat down and tried to go on with his dinner.

The meal was finished in silence. The scene had its effect, and it had all the more surely for two or three things which happened later on.

Example. The whole rough squad was turned into the riding school that afternoon dressed as they might happen to be. The accustomed old drill-horses, saddled and bridled, were ranged on the tan at the wall, with stirrups crossed over the shoulders, and when the word 'Mount' was given, Polson was the only one of the newly recruited crowd who did not make a painful climb in trying to obey the order. He was in the saddle in a flash, and sat there like a centaur.

'We've got one man amongst us, seemin'ly,' said the old rough-riding Sergeant.

'You've seen a horse before to-day, my lad.'

'One or two,' said Polson.

'Come out,' said the red-nosed drill.

'Let's see what you're good for. Put her at that.'

'That' was a furze-covered revolving pole mounted on swivelled trestles, and about three feet high. It was a leap for a child, and Polson went over it, turned and came nimbly back again. The instructor approached him and took him by the foot and ankle.

'That's the shape for the cavalry leg,' he said. 'Keep that and don't lose it. Now put her at it again.'

As the recruit turned to obey the order, the Sergeant mischievously slashed the mare across the quarters, and the venerable she-trooper skipped; but this was hardly a thing to scare the best cross-country man of his shire, and Polson nipped over the bar and back again. At that moment entered Captain Volnay, to whom the drill, saluting, said:

'It's no use wasting this man's time here, sir. Colonel's orders are to get 'em through as fast as possible. He'd be better engaged at foot drill.'

'Very good,' said Volnay. 'You can dismount, my man. Come with me.'

On the far side of the square a squad was at work at the sword exercise, and the instructor's voice was bawling: 'Thrust, return, thrust--return.

Carry--so! Slope--so! Shun! Stand at ease!'

'Well,' said Volnay. 'How do you like it?'

'I shall like it well enough, I dare say. I haven't shaken into the saddle yet.'

'I'm going to hand you over to this lot,' said Volnay, indicating the squad with a motion of the hand. 'D'you know anything about it?'

'A bit,' the recruit answered. 'You see, it's been the dream of my life to join, and I've been taking lessons.'

'Good old enthusiast!' said Volnay. 'I saw you meeting old Stayce. He's a grand old sort. No finer soldier in the army. Regiment adores him. And he has an eye for a man who does his duty. A nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse, old Pol, eh?'

'I'll try,' said Polson.

'You'll try right enough. You're a good old pebble. I've got to be professional, you understand. No end of a devil of a lot of unpleasantness if these chaps suspected favouritism.'

'Oh,' said Polson, 'I'm at work. No playing _en amateur_.'

'That's the style. There are some of our fellows saying there'll be no fighting. That's rubbish. There's glory in front of some of us, Polly.'

They went on in silence until they reached the guard.

'Shun!' roared the Sergeant, and the men clicked their heels together and straightened their backs and tucked their chins in and a.s.sumed that ramrod posture which the authorised drill-book of the day described as 'the free and unconstrained att.i.tude of a soldier.'

'Sergeant,' said Volnay, 'this man has just joined, but Sergeant Gill finds that he can ride and has dismissed him from the riding school. He tells me that he's been taking lessons in sabre practice. Just put him through his paces, will you?'

So the Sergeant set his squad to stand at ease again, and Polson, being provided with a belt and sabre, was stuck up in front of it, feeling absurdly like a trick ape on show.