VC - A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea Part 10

'Draw--so! Slope--so! Prep--air! Prove distance!' and so on.

'Pursuin' practice. One. Cut--thrust--parry. Two. Cut--thrust--parry.

Shunt Now from the word of command, right through. Sword exercise.

Prep--air! Prove distance--go! Shun! Pursuin' practice I Prep--_air!_ Go! Shun! That's all right, sir. Ever been in the service before, young feller?'

'No,' said Polson. 'I always meant to join, and I thought I'd get ready as far as I could.'

'Now look here, my lad,' said the Sergeant. 'You've been through the mill before, you have. You're a deserter, you know, that's what you are.'

Polson laughed. He had thought never to laugh again, but the accusation tickled him.

'I beg your pardon, Captain Volnay,' he said, saluting in officer's fas.h.i.+on--the only way he had been taught; 'but perhaps you will speak up for me.'

'Deserter?' said Volnay. 'Rubbis.h.!.+ Known the man for years. Always keen on the service, and got ready for it. Jervase.' 'Yes, sir.'

'You're a pretty good shot, I gather?' 'Thank you, sir.'

'Any instruction in musketry?' 'Pretty fair, sir.'

'Put him through his facings, Sergeant, in the riding school at four o'clock this afternoon. I'll be there. You hear, Jervase?'

'Yes, sir.'

At this juncture the Sergeant surprised a wink from Volnay, which that young gentleman supposed to have been unseen, and he fell a-thinking.

The result of his cogitation was rapid and conclusive. The young man who knew the minutiae of his trade of soldier, and had an officer's trick of salute, and was on winking terms with the wealthiest man in the regiment, was a person to be made up to, and to be made up to in the least transparent way.

'We're awfully short-handed, sir,' said the Sergeant, touching his forage cap to Volnay. 'We might utilise this man as a drill, sir, if you'll permit me to suggest such a thing. I could get on twice as fast, sir, if I'd half the squad to deal with.'

'Very well,' said Volnay. 'I'll see the adjutant about that.'

And the raw recruit was drilling his barrack-room comrades before he or they had fitted on a uniform, and his ringing 'Carry--so!' or 'Ground--oh!' sounded through the square as imperiously as any in those first busy days.

'You're a (conventional) wonder, you are,' said the drill instructor at the close of the second day. 'You've got the powers that be behind you, and you'll be one of _us_ in a month or two. Promotion's quick when the word comes for blood and rust and mud and oil.'

CHAPTER VIII

If Polson had not to be taught how to ride, how to handle a sabre or a gun, or how to balance himself in the goose-step--matters which he had taken the pains to master long ago--there were still certain things to learn, and the b.u.t.ton stick, and the flat and chain burnish, and the pots of chrome yellow, and blacking, and pipeclay, were just as strange to him as they would have been to any other raw recruit; so that he was teaching his business at one end and learning it at the other for a matter of some four or five days.

There was a poor exile of Erin in the shape of an impecunious Irish n.o.bleman, who enlisted on the same day with Polson and whose uniform was tried on in the same hour.

They were in the tailor's shop together with a hurried Sergeant standing over them.

The aristocratic Paddy pulled on his trousers with a heavy sigh.

'The livery,' said he, 'of me degradation.'

'It is the Queen's uniform,' said Polson, 'and you have a right to be proud to wear it.'

The child of Erin b.u.t.toned his stable jacket and went out to drill, and Polson gave him a purposed double dose of labour. He had given orders to an individual man here and there, but until he became a dragoon he had never commanded a crowd, and there is something in that which makes either a man or a sweep of the commander. Polson was all alert, eager to teach what he knew to the slow and loutish squad before him; but on that first morning of his wearing the Queen's cloth, keen as he was upon his own business, he could not help recognising a certain pair of flea-bitten greys which swept through the barrack gate whilst he was at work some fifty yards away. They came from the Bar-field Arms, and he had helped the man who now drove them in their breaking, four or five years ago.

There was a cry of 'Guard, tarn out!' and a clash of salute as the carriage rolled through the gates without a challenge, and the man who sat at the back, disdaining the cus.h.i.+ons, and with a l.u.s.trous silk hat c.o.c.ked over one eyebrow, was his father. John Jervase came into barracks, as he had gone everywhere throughout his life, with a magnificent impudence, and he distributed salutes to all and sundry from a majestic forefinger; whilst his only son watched him with a sardonic eye as he bowled up to the officers' quarters.

The card of Mr. John Jervase was carried to Colonel Stacey, and Colonel Stacey was ready to receive Mr. Jervase in a flash.

'I am told, sir,' said Mr. Jervase, in that bluff, John-Bull way of his, which had brought a hundred people to his net, 'that the regiment has its marching orders, and I can quite believe that you've got something better to do than to listen to anything I have to say.'

'I'm pressed for time, sir,' said the Colonel. 'The regiment marches in an hour.'

'Here's a lad of mine, sir,' said Jervase, 'has enlisted. And here is a letter from Kirby & Sons, the well-known Army agents, telling me they've got my cheque for his commission. It's been the hope of my heart to see the lad in the army, and it's been his hope also. We've had a quarrel, sir, and I don't mind confessing that it is my fault. The lad's a good lad.' His voice began to tremble. 'But he's throwing his life away for a freak. I've bowt his commission, and here's the letter from the London agents to say that the whole thing is complete. I know he's here, for I heard him as I crossed the barrack square. I'd like you to help me to bring him back to reason.'

The Colonel took a whip from the table and struck a blow upon the door, which was one of his subst.i.tutes for bell-ringing.

'Private Jervase,' he said, 'is drilling a squad in front of the Cupola.

Send him here.' He waved his visitor to a chair, and plunged into the examination of a heap of papers which lay before him. Jervase nursed his silk hat in both hands and waited, listening to the scattered noises of the barrack square and catching amongst them his son's voice with a sort of fatal sound of command in it.

'Is he going to talk to me like that?' asked the father of himself; and the minutes went slowly by until Colonel Stacey's batman tapped respectfully at the door, and announced 'Private Jervase.'

'I'll leave you,' said the Colonel, gathering his papers in his hand, and darting towards the doorway.

'I beg you won't, sir,' cried Jervase the elder, 'I shall be more than obliged to you, sir, if you will help me to bring my boy to reason.

There,' he cried, casting a letter upon the table, 'is a notice from the London agents that his commission is bought and paid for. There's my cheque for a thousand pounds, and if that isn't good enough for him, there's fifty twenty-pound notes of the Bank of England, and he can have both of 'em with as good a heart on my side as if he took the one and left the other.'

The Colonel looked from the son to the father, and back from the father to the son.

'Really, Mr. Jervase,' he said, 'I don't see that this is much of an affair of mine. I will leave you to fight it out between you.'

The Colonel walked to the door, and father and son were left together.

John Jervase, banker, capitalist, driver of men, was not in the least like himself that morning, and his hands trembled so that he was fain to clutch one with another, and to hold both tight between his knees as he sat.

'Look here, Polly,' he began, but Polson gazed sternly straight before him, and gave no sign of sympathy or forgiveness. 'Look here, Polly, I've had about a week of it, and I can't stand it any longer. You and me's got to be friends, or else I've got to put an end to things in a way as you won't fancy.'

He waited, but there was no response from the stolid figure in front of him. Pol-son stared out of the window and stood silent and immobile as a statue.

'I left you to yourself,' said Jervase, 'until I'd got everything right and comfortable. Major de Blaequaire has gone off to Southampton, and I believe he's on his way to Varna, somewhere in the Black Sea. I've made a deposit with Stubbs, his lawyer, of no less than fifty thousand pounds, my lad. That's been a shake, I tell you. I've had a good deal o'

trouble to raise that sum in a hurry, but I've done it, and there's to be no action and no scandal of any sort until De Blaequaire comes back again. That gives your Uncle James and me time to turn round.'

He waited again, and still Polson stood like a statue and made no answer.

'I've done more than that,' Jervase went on. 'I've banked twelve thousand pounds to General Boswell's credit, so that come what may he isn't likely to suffer. If De Blaequaire carries the case on when he comes back to England, James and me can pay him every penny of his rightful claim, and we'll do it.'

He paused again, for his voice had once more half escaped from his control. The boy stood before him, cold and inflexible as doom. To the father's eye he had never looked so manly and handsome as he did at this moment, and what with fatherly pride and self pity and a sense of the magnanimity of his own purposes, the emotions of John Jervase were strangely mixed.

'There'll be no trouble at all, Polly,' he said, after a pause. 'I've put everything straight for you. You've only got to run up to London to sign your papers, to have your commission, and go out like a gentleman.

I've brought a portmanteau with me in the carriage, with everything you'll actually need in it for a week or two, and there's the money for you to order anything else you want. I packed the portmanteau with my own hands, Polly.'

He paused again, for in his own way he was genuinely moved: but the boy still stood there, staring out of the window, and answered never a word.