Snake and Sword Part 27

At last, the wish being father to the thought, she decided it to be "Can do" (she knew that to be a navy expression). "So cheer up.

Writing. His adjutant a pal of mine. Coming over Sat.u.r.day if I get leave. Going Shorncliffe if necessary. Leave due. Dam all right. Will blow over. Thanks for letting me help." Which was not far wrong.

Dear old Ormonde! She knew he would not fail her--although he had been terribly cut up by her rejection of his suit and by his belief that Dam had let him haunt her in the knowledge that she was his own private property, secured to him.

Having dispatched his telegram and interviewed his Adjutant, Captain, and Colonel, Mr. Delorme sat him down and wrote to Lieutenant the Honourable Reginald Montague Despencer, Adjutant of the Queen's Greys:--

"MY DEAR MONTY,

"At the Rag. the other day, respectfully dining with my respected parent, I encountered, respectfully dining with his respected parent, your embryo Strawberry Leaf, old 'Punch Peerson'. (Do you remember his standing on his head on the engine at Blackwater Station when he was too 'merry' to be able to stand steady on his feet?) I learnt that he is still with you and I want him to do something for me. He'll be serious about it if _you_ speak to him about it--and I am writing to him direct. I'm going to send you a letter (under my cover), and on it will be one word 'Dam' (on the envelope, of course). I want you to give this to Punch and order him to show it privately to the _gentlemen-rankers_ of the corps till one says he recognizes the force of the word (pretty forceful, too, what!) and the writing. To this chap he is to give it. Be good to your poor 'rankers,' Monty, I know one d.a.m.ned hard case among them. No fault of _his_, poor chap. I could say a lot--surprise you--but I mustn't. It's awfully good of you, old chap. I know you'll see it through. It concerns as fine a gentleman as ever stepped and _the_ finest woman!

"Ever thine,

"O. DELORME."

"Look here, my lambs--or rather, Black Sheep," quoth Trooper Punch Peerson one tea-time to Troopers Bear, Little, Goate, Nemo, Burke, Jones, and Matthewson, "I suppose none of you answers to the name of '_Dam_'?"

No man answered, and Trooper Peerson looked at the face of no man, nor any one at any other.

"No. I thought not. Well, I have a letter addressed in that objurgatory term, and I am going to place it beneath my pillow before I go out to-night. If it is there when I come in I'll destroy it unopened. 'Nuff said,' as the lady remarked when she put the mop in her husband's mouth. Origin of the phrase 'don't chew the mop,' I should think," and he babbled on, having let his unfortunate friends know that for one of them he had a letter which might be received by the addressed without the least loss of his anonymity.

Dam's heart beat hard and seemed to swell to bursting. He felt suffocated.

"Quaint superscription," he managed to observe. "How did you come by it?" and then wished he had not spoken.... Who but the recipient could be interested in its method of delivery? If anyone suspected him of being "Dam" would they not at once connect him with the notorious Damocles de Warrenne, ex-Sandhurst cadet, proclaimed coward and wretched neurotic decadent before the pained, disgusted eyes of his county, kicked out by his guardian ... a disgrace to two honoured names. ... "The Adjer handed it over. Thought _I_ was the biggest d.a.m.n here, I suppose," Trooper Peerson replied without looking up from his plate. "Practical silly joke I should think. No one here with such a l_oath_some, name as _Dam_, of course," but Trooper Punch Peerson had his philosophic "doots". He, like others of that set, had heard of a big chap who was a marvel at Sandhurst with the gloves, sword, horse, and other things, and who had suddenly and marvellously disappeared into thin air leaving no trace behind him, after some public scandal or other.... But that was no concern of Trooper Punch Peerson, gentleman....

With a wary eye on Peerson, Dam lay on his bed, affecting to read a stale and dirty news-sheet. He saw him slip something beneath his pillow and swagger out of the barrack-room. Anon no member of the little band of gentleman-rankers was left. Later, the room was empty, save for a heavily snoring drunkard and a busy polisher who, at the shelf-table at the far end of the room, laboured on his jack-boots, hissing the while, like a groom with a dandy-brush.

Going to Peerson's bed, Dam s.n.a.t.c.hed the letter, returned to his own, and flung himself down again--his heart pumping as though he had just finished a mile race. _Lucille had got a letter to him somehow_.

Lucille was not going to drop him yet--in spite of having seen him a red-handed, crop-haired, "quiff"-wearing, coa.r.s.e-looking soldier....

Was there another woman in the world like Lucille? Would any other girl have so risen superior to her breeding, and the teachings of Miss Smellie, as to do what she thought right, regardless of public scandal...? But he must not give her the opportunity of being seen talking to a soldier again--much less kissing one. Not that she would want to kiss him again like that. That was the kiss of welcome, of encouragement, of proof that she was unchanged to him--her first sight of him after the _debacle_. It was the unchecked impulse of a n.o.ble heart--and the action showed that Miss Smellie had been unable to do it much harm with her miserable artificialities and stiflings of all that is natural and human and right.... Should he read the letter at once or treasure it up and keep it as a treat in store? He would hold it in his hand unopened and imagine its contents. He would spin out the glorious pleasure of possession of an unopened letter from Lucille. He could, of course, read it hundreds of times--but he would then soon know it by heart, and although its charm and value would be no less, it would merge with his other memories and become a memory itself. He did not want it to become a memory too soon.

The longer it remained an antic.i.p.ation, the more distant the day when it became a memory....

With a groan of "Oh, my brain's softening and I'm becoming a sentimentalist," he opened the letter and read Lucille's loving, cheering--yet agonizing, maddening--words:--

"MY OWN DARLING DAM,

"If this letter reaches you safely you are to sit down at once and write to me to tell me how to address you by post in the ordinary way. If you don't I shall come and haunt the entrance to the Lines and waylay you. People will think I am a poor soul whom you have married and deserted, or whom you won't marry. _I'll_ show up your wicked cruelty to a poor girl! How would you like your comrades to say 'Look out, Bill, your pore wife's 'anging about the gates' and to have to lie low--and send out scouts to see if the coast was clear later on? Don't you go playing fast and loose with _me_, master Dam, winning my young affections, making love to me, kissing me--and then refusing to marry me after it all! I don't want to be too hard on you (and I am reasonable enough to admit that one-and-two a day puts things on a smaller scale than I have been accustomed to in the home of my fathers--or rather uncles, or perhaps uncles-in-law), and like the kind Tailor whom the Haddock advertises (and like the unkind Judge before whom he'll some day come for something) I will 'give you time'. But it's only a respite, Mr. de Warrenne.

You are not going to trifle with my young feelings and escape altogether. I have my eye on you--and if I respect your one-and-twopence a day _now_, it is on the clear understanding that you share my Little All on the day I come of age. I will trust you once more, although you _have_ treated me so--bolting and hiding from your confiding fiancee.

"So write and tell me what you call yourself, so that I can write to you regularly and satisfy myself that you are not escaping me again. How _could_ you treat a poor trusting female so--and then when she had found you again, and was showing her delight and begging to be married and settled in life--to rush away from her, leaving her and her modest matrimonial proposals scorned and rejected! For shame, Sir! I've a good mind to come and complain to your Colonel and ask him to make you keep your solemn promises and marry me....

"Now look here, darling, nonsense aside--I solemnly swear that if you don't buy yourself out of the army on the day I come of age (or before, if you will, and can) I will really come and make you marry me and I will live with you as a soldier's wife.

If you persist in your wrong-headed notion of being a 'disgrace' (_you_!) then we'll just adopt the army as a career, and we'll go through all the phases till you get a Commission. I hope you won't take this course--but if you do, you'll be a second Hector Macdonald and retire as Lieutenant-General Sir Damocles de Warrenne (K.C.B., K.C.M.G., K.C.S.I., D.S.O., and, of course, V.C.), having confessed to an _alias_. It will be a long time before we should be in really congenial society, that way, darling, but I'm sure I should enjoy every hour of it with you, so long as I felt I was a comfort and happiness to you. And when you got your Commission I should not be a social drag upon you as sometimes happens. Nor before it should I be a nuisance and hindrance to you and make you wish you were 'shut of the curse of a soldier'. I could 'rough it' as well as you and, besides, there would _be_ no 'roughing it' where you were, for me. It is _here_ that I am 'roughing it,' sitting impotent and wondering what is happening to you, and whether that terrible illness ever seizes you, and whether you are properly looked after when it does.

"Now, just realize, dearest Dam--I said I would wait twenty years for you, if necessary. I would and I will, but don't make me do it, darling.

Realize how happy I should be if I could only come and sew and cook and scrub and work for you.

Can you understand that life is only measurable in terms of happiness and that _my_ happiness can only be where _you,_ are? If you weren't liable to these seizures I could bear to wait, but as it is, I can't.

I beg and beseech you not to make me wait till I am of age, Dam. There's no telling what may happen to you and I just can't bear it. _I'm coming_, if I don't hear from you, and I can easily do something to compel you to marry me, if I come. You are _not_ going to bear this alone, darling, so don't imagine it. We're not going to keep separate shops after all these years, just because you're ill with a trouble of some kind that fools can't understand.

"Now write to me at once and put me in a position to write to you in the ordinary way--or look out for me! I'm all ready to run away, all sorts of useful things packed--ready to come and be a soldier's girl.

"You know that I _do_ what I think I'll do--you spoke of my 'steel-straight directness and sweet brave will' in the poem you were making about me, you poor funny old boy, when you vanished, and which I found in your room when I went there to cry, (Oh, _how_ I cried when I found your odds and ends of verse about me there--I really did think my heart was 'broken' in actual fact.) Don't make me suffer any more, darling. I'm sure your Colonel will be sweet about it and give us a nice little house all to ourselves, now he has seen what a splendid soldier you are. If you stick to your folly about 'disgrace' I need not tell him our names and Grumper couldn't take me away from you, even if he ever found out where we were.

"I could go on writing all night, darling, but I'll only just say again _I am going to marry you and take care of you, Dam, in the army or out of it._

"Your fiancee and friend,

"LUCILLE GAVESTONE."

Dam groaned aloud.

"Four o' rum 'ot, is wot _you_ want, mate, for that," said the industrious self-improver at the shelf-table. "Got a chill on yer stummick on sentry-go in the fog an' rine las' night.... I'd give a 'ogs'ead to see the bloke who wrote in the bloomin' Reggilashuns _'nor must bloomin' sentries stand in their blasted sentry-boxes in good or even in moderate-weather'_ a doin' of it 'isself in 'is bloomin'

'moderate weather' with water a runnin' down 'is back, an' 'is feet froze into a puddle, an' the fog a chokin' of 'im, an' 'is blighted carbine feelin' like a yard o' bad ice--an' then find the bloomin'

winder above 'is bed been opened by some kind bloke an' 'is bed a blasted swamp... Yus--you 'ave four o' rum 'ot and you'll feel like the bloomin' 'Ouse o' Lords. Then 'ave a Livin'stone Rouser." "Oh, shut up," said Dam, cursing the Bathos of Things and returning to the beginning of Lucille's letter.

In his somewhat incoherent reply, Dam a.s.sured Lucille that he was in the rudest health and spirits, and the particular pet of his Colonel who inquired after his health almost daily with tender solicitude; that he had exaggerated his feeling on That Evening when he had kissed Lucille as a lover, and begged forgiveness; that marriage would seriously hamper a most promising military career; that he had had no recurrence of the "fit" (a mere touch of sun); that it would be unkind and unfair of Lucille to bring scandal and disgrace upon a rising young soldier by hanging about the Lines and making inquiries about him with a view to forcing him into marriage, making him keep to a bargain made in a rash, unguarded moment of sentimentality; that, in any case, soldiers could not marry until they had a certain income and status, and, if they did so, it was no marriage and they were sent to jail; that his worst enemy would not do anything to drag him out once again into the light of publicity, and disgrace his family further, now that he had effectually disappeared and was being forgotten; and that he announced that he was known as Trooper Matthewson (E Troop, The Queen's Greys, Cavalry Lines, Shorncliffe) to prevent Lucille from keeping her most unladylike promise of persecuting him.

Lucille's next letter was shorter than the first.

"MY DARLING DAM,

"Don't be such a _priceless_ a.s.s. Come off it.

"Your own

"LUCILLE.

"P.S.--Write to me properly at once--or expect me on Monday."

He obeyed, poured out his whole heart in love and thanks and blessings, and persuaded her that the one thing that could increase his misery would be her presence, and swore that he would strain every nerve to appear before her at the earliest possible moment a free man with redeemed name--provided he could persuade himself he was not _a congenital lunatic, an epileptic, a decadent--could cure himself of his mental disease...._

CHAPTER XI.

MORE MYRMIDONS.

The truly busy man cannot be actively and consciously unhappy. The truly miserable and despondent person is never continuously and actively employed. Fits of deep depression there may be for the worker when work is impossible, but, unless there be mental and physical illness, sleep is the other anaesthetic, refuge--and reward.

The Wise thank G.o.d for Work and for Sleep--and pay large premia of the former as Insurance in the latter.

To Damocles de Warrenne--to whom the name "Trooper Matthewson" now seemed the only one he had ever had--the craved necessity of life and sanity was _work_, occupation, mental and physical labour. He would have blessed the man who sentenced him to commence the digging of a trench ten miles long and a yard deep for morning and evening labour, and to take over all the accounts of each squadron, for employment in the heat of the day. There was no man in the regiment so indefatigable, so energetic, so persevering, so insatiable of "fatigues," so willing and anxious to do other people's duty as well as his own, so restless, so untiring as Trooper Matthewson of E Troop.

For Damocles de Warrenne was in the Land of the Serpent and lived in fear. He lived in fear and feared to live; he thought of Fear and feared to think. He turned to work as, but for the memory of Lucille, he would have turned to drink: he laboured to earn deep dreamless sleep and he dreaded sleep. Awake, he could drug himself with work; asleep, he was the prey--the bound, gagged helpless, abject prey--of the Snake. The greediest glutton for work in the best working regiment in the world was Trooper Matthewson--but for him was no promotion. He was, alas, "unreliable"--apt to be "drunk and disorderly," drunk to the point of "seeing snakes" and becoming a weeping, screaming lunatic--a disgusting spectacle. And, when brought up for sentence, would solemnly a.s.sure the Colonel that he was _a total abstainer_, and stick to it when "told-off" for adding impudent lying to shameful indulgence and sickening behaviour. No promotion for that type of waster while Colonel the Earl of A---- commanded the Queen's Greys, nor while Captain Daunt commanded the squadron the trooper occasionally disgraced.