Have you forgotten a trooper of Her Majesty’s Hundredth Regiment
of Lancers, who, being secretly married to his mother’s milkmaid,
and detected by a pigman in the administration of divers conjugal
endearments--sanctioned by Church and State, but unpardonable in the
hollow eyes of Sarah Horrotian--was, by maternal decree, incontinently
driven--with his young bride and his good horse Blueberry--forth from
the gates of Upper Clays Farm?
* * * * *
The wedded pair supped and slept that night at Market Drowsing, in
a garret of the Saracen’s Head Inn. So many thirsty callers were
attracted to the bar of this hostelry by the news--disseminated as soon
as told--of the rupture between Sarah Horrotian and her son, that the
landlord, for the accommodation above-named, refused payment.
“For--my part I praise ’e for the step you’ve taken! All same,” the
landlord added, with a touch of the Sloughshire caution, “theer be no
need for ’e to go telling Widow Horrotian as much. For her puts up her
shay and pony here regularly on market-days--and custom is custom, be
it large or small.”
At dawn, fortified by slaps on the back and a good many handshakes, as
well as cold bacon, bread and butter, tea for the bride and ale for the
groom; man, woman, and horse took the road for Dullingstoke Junction,
whence Mrs. Joshua Horrotian was to proceed by rail to the cavalry
depot town of Spurham, and await at an address supplied by her husband,
his slower arrival by road.
It was a raw, cold, weeping day. A numbing wind blew between its sleety
showers. As they paused on the bridge that spanned the swollen river
to look their last at the farm perched on the high bleak ridge of the
sixty-acre upland, a scarlet mail-phaeton rattled past behind the
flying heels of its pair of spirited blacks. The trooper, recognizing
the squat and bulky figure buttoned in beside the driving groom under
the phaeton’s leather apron, wrapped in a dreadnought cloak and
sheltered under the vast green silk umbrella dutifully held over him
by the servant who occupied the back seat; reddened to the rim of the
idiotic little muffin-shaped forage-cap of German pattern approved by
Government, but Thompson Jowell gave no sign.
“Damn my tongue!” had come from Josh in almost a mellow tone of
retrospective ruefulness.
“Whatever for, dear Josh?”
Nelly turned on her love rounded eyes of alarmed astonishment. He
answered, wiping with the back of his sinewy hand a splash of Jowell’s
mud from his sunburnt cheek.
“Because I doubt I ha’ made me another enemy with it, and that’s one
too many, Pretty--as things are just now.” He whistled a stave of “The
Ratcatcher’s Daughter” with defiant melodiousness, then broke off to
say with a broad, irrepressible smile:
“To think of my having twitted of him wi’ buying spoiled hay and
mildewed barley, and pitched them kilns that are worked in a name
that isn’t his’n at Little Milding--along of the empty jam-tins and
dead kittens and so on that ha’ been sarved out to us chaps in the
Government Forage trusses--at his head. Egad! I can hardly believe it
o’ myself!”
With her bonnet thrust back and falling on her shoulders, and the sweet
rosiness hunted from her cheeks by the revelation of his terrible
presumption, she panted softly:
“Dear Josh, you never!...”
“Ay! but I did though,” the soldier retorted, “as true as I live!”
“And him that great and rich and powerful,” she breathed. “Whatever
will he do to ’e? By way o’ revenge, I mean--come he gets the chance.”
“Why, he med make more bad blood between me and mother--if so be
as that’s to be done,” said Josh, meditatively tapping Blueberry’s
shining neck with the end of the bridle he held--“or drop a word at
Headquarters that ’ud sow salt in my bed.” He added: “By jingo! if--as
seems likely--I be doomed to spend my long life sogering, I’ve done
none too well by myself. Or you, poor girl, I doubt!”
His tone of pity hung bright drops on her dark eyelashes. She murmured,
stroking the blue cloth that covered the broad shoulders:
“How can e’ fare to say that? Haven’t ’e married me? And the long life
you talk of will be ours, dear love!--not yours to live alone.”
“The harder for you, maybe!” he said, bending his brows and setting
his strong jaw doggedly. “If I were free of the Service, to earn
enough to keep you in comfort would be an easy job for hands as strong
as mine. But with ’em tied to the lance, carbine and sword--and my
legs bent round a horse’s belly--all I am worth in the opinion of
my betters is one-and-tuppence a day. You ha’ got to go into decent
lodgings somewheres,” pursued the trooper, “till I can get the ear of
the Officer Commanding our Squadron--and my Captain being his friend,
and a free-spoken, kindly young gentleman--med be he’ll take an
interest in our case. If so, the fact o’ my having gone and got married
without leave--and I could punch my own head for a fool’s for having
done it!--might be blinked at and got over like,--though it comes
next to Insubordination and Neglect of Orders on the long list of a
soldier’s sins. In which case--inquiries being made and satisfactorily
answered--you’ll be allowed fifteen pence a week. It ain’t a handsome
income,” commented Josh, “when you remember it’s supposed to find ’e in
house-room and food and firing, but at any rate it’ll eke out what we
have. Even if I’m disappointed about the Captain’s buying Blueberry,
I’ve a pound or so put by in the little green purse you netted, against
a rainy day. And if this bain’t the kind o’ weather that calls for it
I’m a Dutchman! No!--don’t you begin to talk about your blessed little
savings,” the soldier added hastily, “laid up out o’ the four pounds
odd to-year my mother’s paid ’e!... There may come a use for them,
before you know!”
She faltered, with the banished roses crowding back into the sweet oval
cheeks, and the shy hazel eyes shunning his warm blue ones:
“And shall I have to live in lodgings always?”
“Why,” said Josh, setting his strong face ahead as he marched steadily
by the side of Blueberry, “if I have luck in getting a good word from
Captain Bertham, you may be took upon the strength of the Regiment as a
Squadron Woman by-and-by. Which means you’ll live wi’ me in Barracks,
and share a room with eight or ten married couples and their families,
and maybe a bachelor or two thrown in, in case we’re too private and
decent-like among ourselves.... West Indian slaves, I’m told, are
allowed separate huts by their masters when they’re married. But an
Army blanket or a patchwork counterpane hung on a clothes-line,” said
Joshua Horrotian, with a resentful light burning in his wide blue
eyes, “is good enough--according to the grand gentlemen who sit in
Cabinet and call themselves the Government--to hide the blushes of a
soldier’s wife!” He added, with a latent grin hovering about the mouth
that was shaded by the bold dark red mustache: “Not that it ’ud take
an over-and-above sized one to hide Mrs. Geogehagan’s. She bain’t a
blushing sort--though I’ve seen Geogehagan’s ears as red as two boiled
lobsters when she’ve took it into her head to pull ’em--the masterful
catamaran!”
“Whatever for?”
The trooper’s solid shoulders shook a little. The grin was no longer
latent as he replied:
“For the preservation of Discipline--or because the Corporal had
stopped in Canteen when he’d ought to ha’ been helping her peel the
taters or wash the babbies.... ‘Give me your ear!’--she says to
’n--and he gives it, as meek as a mouse. Ha, ha, ha!” He ceased his
laughter to say in a tone not at all mirthful: “And mind you!--she’s
the sort of woman you’ll have to live alongside of, if you’re lucky.
As for the rest.... But there!--I’ve took oath to cure myself of
griding and grumbling.... ‘Discontented,’ that’s one o’ the things
Mr. Jowell called me yesterday, and for all I know the man may be
right.” He filled his big chest with the keen air and puffed it out
again, as though he blew away his discontent with it. “Look here! Let’s
make-believe, as the children say, that all’s for the best that’s
happened. I’m game if you are!”
“And sure to goodness,” Nelly put in, as the big hairy-backed hand
gave the upward twist to the dark red mustaches, and the firm mouth
it shaded curved in the old smile, “what wi’ Jason’s ragging and your
mother’s nagging, I could no ways ha’ bided to The Clays for long.”
“No more you could, now I come to think of it!”
In cheering the drooping spirits of his bride he had heartened himself;
and now he turned a brightened face to Nelly’s, and said in tones that
had the old hearty, buoyant ring: “True love drove our nail, Pretty,
and Good Luck may clinch it. I said to that big gentleman I angered
yesterday wi’ my plain talk--as how I’d leave the crimson silk sash
and the officer’s gold epaulettes a-hanging at the top of the tree for
some cleverer fellow than me to reach down. But wi’ you standing at the
bottom to cheer me on,” said Josh, with a great revival of energy and
spirits, “damme if I don’t have another try for ’em! So remember,--the
toast for my next mug of beer--which must be a half-pint, seeing as
I’m a married man and can’t afford luxuries--should go: ‘Here’s to
Promotion--and may it come soon!’ Hup! will ’e, Blueberry!” The soldier
added as the young horse obediently quickened his pace. “You’re our
best friend just now, it strikes me. For if so be as the Captain’s
pleased wi’ you and buys you--there’s his money to put with the rest
into the stocking--not to mention his good word for your master’s
wife. Look at his ears, Pretty,” adjured Josh, beaming and patting the
glossy gray shoulder. “Don’t the twitch and set of ’em seem to answer,
that what he can do he will?... Talk about Dick Whittington’s Cat--and
Puss in Boots, this here horse o’ mine is worth a shipload o’ such
miaulers. When we get to Dullingstoke,--and it’s not but three miles
farther,--suppose you hear the bells o’ the little yellow iron church
in the Stokes Road begin to ring out ‘Turn again, Joshua Horrotian,
Regimental Sergeant-Major!’ don’t you be surprised!”