Snake and Sword Part 23

"I'll go to Clink first," gasps Muggins. "I'll go to 'Ell first."

"No. _Afterwards,_" replies the Riding-Master and sends the Rough-Riding Corporal for the backboard--dread instrument of equestrian persuasion.

Muggins is forcibly mounted, put in the lunging ring and sent round and round till he throws himself off at full gallop and lies crying and sobbing like a child--utterly broken.

Riding-Master smiles, allows Muggins to grow calmer, accepts his apologies and promises, shows him he has had his h.e.l.l _after_, as promised, and that it is a better punishment than one that leaves him with a serious "crime" entry on his Defaulter's Sheet for life....

That vile and d.a.m.ning sheet that records the youthful peccadilloes and keeps it a life-long punishment after its own severe punishment....

To the Rough-Riding Sergeant-Major he quietly remarks: "No good non-com _makes_ crimes ... and don't forget that the day of riding-school brutality is pa.s.sing. You can carry a man further than you can kick him."

And the interrupted lesson continues.

"Sit _back_ and you can't come off. n.o.body falls off backwards." ...

Poor "Old Sit-Back"! (as he was called from his constant cry)--after giving that order and guarantee daily for countless days--was killed in the riding-school by coming off backwards from the stripped saddle of a rearing horse--(which promptly fell upon him and crushed his chest)--that had never reared before and would not have reared then, it was said, but for the mysterious introduction, under its saddle, of a remarkably "foreign" body.

Memories ...!

How certain old "Sit-Back" had been that Dam was a worthless "back-to-the-Army-again" when he found him a finished horseman, an extraordinarily expert swordsman, and a master of the lance.

"You aren't old enough for a 'time-expired,'" he mused, "nor for a cas.h.i.+ered officer. One of the professional 'enlist-desert-and-sell-me-kit,'

I suppose. Anyhow you'll do time for one of the three if _I_ don't approve of ye.... You've been in the Cavalry before. Lancer regiment, too. Don't tell _me_ lies ... but see to it that I'm satisfied with your conduct. Gentlemen-rankers are better in their proper place--_Jail_." ...

None the less it had given Dam a thrill of pride when, on being dismissed recruit-drills and drafted from the reserve troop to a squadron, the Adjutant had posted him to E Troop, wherein were congregated the seven other undoubted gentlemen-rankers of the Queen's Greys (one of whom would one day become a peer of the realm and, meantime, followed what he called "the only profession in the world"

in discomfort for a s.p.a.ce, the while his Commission ripened).

To this small band of "rankers" the accession of the finest boxer, swordsman, and horseman in the corps, was invaluable, and helped them notably in their endeavour to show that there are exceptions to all rules, and that a gentleman _can_ make a first-cla.s.s trooper. At least so "Peerson" had said, and Dam had been made almost happy for a day.

Memories ...!

His first walk abroad from barracks, clad in the "walking-out" finery of sh.e.l.l-jacket and overalls, with the jingle of spurs and effort at the true Cavalry swagger, or rather the first attempt at a walk abroad, for the expedition had ended disastrously ere well begun.

Unable to shake off his admirer, Trooper Herbert Hawker, Dam had just pa.s.sed the Main Guard and main gates in the company of Herbert, and the two recruits had encountered the Adjutant and saluted with the utmost smartness and respect....

"What the Purple h.e.l.l's that thing?" had drawled the Adjutant thereupon--pointing his whip at Trooper Henry Hawker, whose trap-like mouth incontinent fell open with astonishment. "It's got up in an imitation of the uniform of the Queen's Greys, I do believe!... It's not a rag doll either.... It's a G.o.d-forsaken undertaker's mute in a red and black shroud with a cake-tin at the back of its turnip head and a pair of chemises on its ugly hands.... Sergeant of the Guard!...

Here!"

"Sir?" and a salute of incredible precision from the Sergeant of the Guard.

"What the name of the Devil's old Aunt is _this_ thing? What are you on Guard for? To write hymns and scare crows--or to allow decayed charwomen to stroll out of barracks in a dem parody of your uniform?

Look at her! Could turn round in the jacket without taking it off.

Room for both legs in one of the overalls. Cap on his beastly neck.

Gloves like a pair of ... _Get inside you_!... Take the thing in with a pair of tongs and bury it where it won't contaminate the dung-pits.

Burn it! Shoot it! Drown it! D'ye hear?... And then I'll put you under arrest for letting it pa.s.s...."

It had been a wondrously deflated and chapfallen Herbert that had slunk back to the room of the reserve troop, and perhaps his reputation as a mighty bruiser had never stood him in so good stead as when it transpired that an Order had been promulgated that no recruit should leave barracks during the first three months of his service, and that the names of all such embryos should be posted in the Main Guard for the information of the Sergeant....

Memories ...!

His first march behind the Band to Church....

The first Review and March Past....

His first introduction to bread-and-lard....

His wicked carelessness in forgetting--or attempting to disregard--the law of the drinking-troughs. "So long as one horse has his head down no horse is to go." There had been over a score drinking and he had moved off while one dipsomaniac was having a last suck.

His criminal carelessness in not removing his sword and leaving it in the Guard-room, when going on sentry after guard-mounting--"getting the good Sergeant into trouble, too, and making it appear that _he_ had been equally criminally careless ".

The desperate quarrel between Hawker and Bone as to whether the 10th Hussars were called the "s.h.i.+ny Tenth" because of their general material and spiritual brilliance, or the "Chainy Tenth" because their Officers wore pouch-belts of gold chain-mail.... The similar one between b.u.t.tle and Smith as to the reason of a brother regiment being known as "The Virgin Mary's Body-guard," and their reluctant acceptance of Dam's dictum that they were both wrong, it having been earned by them in the service of a certain Maria Theresa, a lady unknown to Messrs. b.u.t.tle and Smith.... Dam had found himself developing into a positive bully in his determination to prevent senseless quarrelling, senseless misconduct, senseless humourless foulness, senseless humourless blasphemy, and all that unnecessary, avoidable ugliness that so richly augmented the unavoidable....

Memories ...!

Sitting throughout compulsory church, cursing and mutinous of heart, because after spending several hours of the Day of Rest in burnis.h.i.+ng and pipe-claying, blacking and s.h.i.+ning ("Sunday spit an' polish"), he was under orders for sharp punishment--because at the last moment his tunic had been fouled by a pa.s.sing pigeon! When would the Authorities realize that soldiers are still men, still Englishmen (even if they have, by becoming soldiers, lost their birthright of appeal to the Law of the Land, though not their amenability to its authority), and cease to make the Blessed Sabbath a curse, the worst day of the week, and to herd angry, resentful soldiers into church to blaspheme with politely pious faces? Oh, British, British, Pharisees and Humbugs--make Sunday a curse, and drive the soldier into church to do his cursing--make it the chief day of dress "crimes" and punishments, as well as the busiest day, and force the soldier into church to Return Thanks....

The only man in the world flung into church as though into jail for punishment! Shout it in the Soldier's ear, "_You are not a Man, you are a Slave_," on Sundays also, on Sundays louder than usual.... And when he has spent his Sunday morning in extra hard labour, in suffering the indignity of being compulsorily marched to church, and very frequently of having been punished because it is a good day on which a Sergeant may decide that he is not sufficiently cleanly shaved or his boots of minor effulgence--then let him sit and watch his hot Sunday dinner grow stone cold before the Colonel stalks through the room, asks a perfunctory question, and he is free to fall to.

"O Day of Rest and Gladness, O Day of Joy most Bright...."

_Yah!_

A pity some of the energy that went to making the annual 20,000 military "criminals" out of honest, law-abiding, well-intending men could not go to hara.s.sing the Canteen instead of the soldier (whom the Canteen swindles right and left, and whence _he_ gets salt-watery beer, and an "ounce" of tobacco that will go straight into his pipe in one "fill"--no need to wrap it up, thank you) and discovering how handsome fortunes, as well as substantial "illegal gratifications,"

are made out of his much-stoppaged one-and-tuppence-a-week.

Did the Authorities really yearn to _dis_courage enlistment and to _en_courage desertion and "crime"? When would they realize that making "crimes," and manufacturing "criminals" from honest men, is _not_ discipline, is _not_ making soldiers, is _not_ improving the Army--is _not_ common ordinary sanity and sense? When would they break their dull, unimaginative, hide-bound--no, tape-bound--souls from the ideas that prevailed before (and murdered) the Crimean Army.... The Army is not now the sweepings of the jails, and more in need of the wild-beast tamer than of the kind firm teacher, as once it was. How long will they continue to suppose that you make a fine fighting-man, and a self-reliant, intelligent soldier, by treating him as a depraved child, as a rightless slave, as a mindless automaton, and by encouraging the public (whom he protects) to regard him as a low criminal ruffian to be cla.s.sed with the broad-arrowed convict, and to be excluded from places where any loafing rotten lout may go.... When would a lawyer-ridden Army Council realize that there is a trifle of significance in the fact that there are four times as many soldier suicides as there are civilian, and that the finest advertis.e.m.e.nt for the dwindling Army _is the soldier_. To think that sober men should, with one hand spend vast sums in lying advertis.e.m.e.nts for the Army, and with the other maintain a system that makes the soldier on furlough reply to the question "Shall I enlist, mate?" with the words "Not while you got a razor to cut yer throat".... Ah, well, common sense would reach even the Army some day, and the soldier be treated and disciplined as a man and a citizen--and perhaps, when it did, and the soldier gave a better description of his life, the other citizen, the smug knave who despises him while he shelters behind him, will become less averse from having his own round shoulders straightened, his back flattened and his muscles developed as he takes his part in the first fundamental elementary duty of a citizen--preparation for the defence of hearth and home.... Lucille! Well ... Thank G.o.d she could not see him and know his life. If _she_ had any kindness left for him she would suffer to watch him eating well-nigh uneatable food, grooming a horse, sweeping a stable, polis.h.i.+ng trestle-legs with blacklead, scrubbing floors, sleeping on damp straw, carrying coals, doing scullion-work for uneducated roughs, being brow-beaten, bullied, and cursed by them in tight-lipped silence--not that these things troubled him personally--the less idle leisure for thought the better, and no real man minds physical hards.h.i.+p--there is no indignity in labour _per se_ any more than there is dignity....

"'Ere, Maffewson, you bone-idle, moonin' waster," bawled the raucous voice of Lance-Corporal Prag, and Dam's soaring spirit fell to earth.

The first officer to whom Trooper Matthewson gave his smart respectful salute as he stood on sentry-duty was the Major, the Second-in-Command of the Queen's Greys, newly rejoined from furlough,--a belted Earl, famous for his sporting habit of riding always and everywhere without a saddle--who, as a merry subaltern, had been Lieutenant Lord Ochterlonie and Adjutant of the Queen's Greys at Bimariabad in India.

There, he had, almost daily, taken upon his knee, shoulder, saddle, or dog-cart, the chubby son of his polo and pig-sticking exemplar, Colonel Matthew Devon de Warrenne.

The sentry had a dim idea that he had seen the Major somewhere before.

CHAPTER IX.

A SNAKE AVENGES A HADDOCK AND LUCILLE BEHAVES IN AN UN-SMELLIEAN MANNER.

Finding himself free for the afternoon, and the proud possessor of several s.h.i.+llings, "Trooper Matthewson" decided to walk to Folkestone, attend an attractively advertised concert on the pier, and then indulge in an absolutely private meal in some small tea-room or confectioner's shop.

Arrayed in scarlet sh.e.l.l-jacket, white-striped overalls, and pill-box cap, he started forth, carrying himself as though exceeding proud to be what he was, and wondering whether a swim in the sea, which should end somewhere between Shorncliffe and Dieppe (and end his troubles too), would not be a better pastime.

Arrived at the Folkestone pier, Dam approached the ticket office at the entrance and tendered his s.h.i.+lling to the oily-curled, curly-nosed young Jew who sat at the receipt of custom.

"Clear out o' this," said Levi Solomonson.

"I want a ticket for the concert," said Dam, not understanding.