The Tsar was genuinely puzzled to know--War having been declared
between himself and the Sultan--why he could not crumple those thirteen
vessels of a Turkish Convoy bound with troops, arms, and ammunition
for a certain important port on the coast of the Black Sea without
provoking such a deafening outcry from Gallia and Britannia; and,
indeed, what the Daily Press of both these countries persisted in
calling the “outrage” of Sinope, seems at this distance of time no more
than a provoked and unavoidable measure of defense.
A Comic Illustrated Paper of the date represents the Sultan as a
curled darling in short socks, strap-shoes, petticoats, and pinafore,
sniveling, with his little fist in his weeping eyes--the while he
blubbers out to grinning, knickerbockered Russia:
“Hoo--boohoo! You’ve broken my nice new Fleet!... Wait till I tell
Nursie France and Auntie Britannia--they’ll give you a good spanking,
you--boohoo!--naughty Boy!”
* * * * *
For some reason there was hurry. The Holy Standard was unfurled and
the Sacred Shirt displayed; the Moslem, who had suddenly become so
dear to us, plunged, with renewed vigor, into hostilities; the Russian
Ambassadors quitted London and Paris; but weeks before Great Britain
and France leagued themselves with the Infidel against Christian
Russia, and War was proclaimed by the Lord Mayor of London from the
steps of the Royal Exchange, Her Majesty’s Foot Guards received
orders to proceed to the East, and the Second Battalion of the Cut
Red Feathers marched out from St. George’s Barracks; and the Third
Battalion of the White Tufts marched out from the Tower; and the First
Battalion of the Bearskins Plain marched out of Windsor--slept a night
at Wellington Barracks; and with bands playing “Cheer, Boys, Cheer,”
“We are Going Far Away,” “Oh, Susannah! Don’t You Cry for Me!” and “The
British Grenadiers,” they were off and away for Gallipoli _via_--why
_via_ Malta?
You may conceive the cheers, the tears, the shaking of the earth by
the even tread of battalions of marching men; the waving of hats
and pocket-handkerchiefs; the wives, and children, and sweethearts
crying and clinging to husbands’, and fathers’, and lovers’ arms.
You may imagine the roaring trade done by the venders of oranges,
whelks, polonies, pettitoes, and other portable refreshments; and the
generosity with which these were pressed upon the rank-and-file; and
the lavishness with which the thirst of the British soldier--great even
in piping times of peace--was assuaged by copious draughts of foaming
beer and liquors even more potent....
The Bearskins Plain got the best send-off, for from Bird Cage Walk to
Buckingham Palace, and along the Strand to Waterloo, many thousands of
people were gathered to give them God-speed, and the Mall was made gay
with bunting and streamers. Jowell, Sewell, Cowell, Towell, Bowell, and
Co., of whose cunning, and greed, and rapacity most of these departing
warriors were presently to perish--filled an official window in Pall
Mall with gorgeous waistcoats and patriotic enthusiasm.
* * * * *
“Noble fellows! God bless ’em!” they cried, and shed tears and waved
their pocket-handkerchiefs. They slopped over with patriotic sentiments
as the champagne slopped over their glasses; while they told each other
how soon those steadily-marching legs would bring their owners back.
The whole thing was extravagantly simple. The British Army had but to
proceed to the East--quite an enviable trip now the spring-time was
approaching--show itself--conquer by the mere show; and return to be
thanked and praised.
They were to return so soon, and the climate of Eastern Europe was
believed, even in March, to be so warm and genial, that nothing in
the way of extra covering had been issued to England’s darling sons.
Sire my Friend, had equipped the French Army with a complete outfit of
serviceable winter clothing. Stout and easy-fitting boots protected
its feet, great-coats of heavy waterproofed material were supplied it
against the nip of cold or the exigencies of wet weather. Even the
Infidel had purchased for his troops, fifty thousand ample capotes
of leather lined with sheepskin; but Britannia relied exclusively
upon the glow of martial ardor for the generation and preservation of
caloric. Hence it came about that whole battalions of the legs that
were presently to march away, marched in the trousers of white duck, in
which they had returned from service in Bermuda, China, and the East
Indies. And the rest in a shoddy summer cloth of dirty bluish gray.
It is odd how universal was that conviction that the Expedition to
the East was to be nothing beyond a flying visit. When the cheering
broke out at the Officers’ Mess House--the Rathkeale Ragamuffins
being at that moment quartered at the Victoria Barracks, Dublin;
my Aunt Julietta,--who dined with the children at one o’clock, and
frugally supped upon cold mutton and the remains of the rice-pudding
or custard in the petrified or gelid state, whilst her Golightly was
enjoying his seven courses, cheese, and dessert in the society of his
peers--my Aunt, learning that the dreaded summons had come, greeted the
reappearance of her lord with an outburst of hysterical emotion. Upon
which Captain Goliath, whom you may suppose well primed with Mess Port,
and subsequent whisky-toddy; jested at her wifely tears, and made light
of her tender terrors.
“I tell ye there’s no danger!--they’ll simply send us out and order us
back again. We’ll never get a _shass_ at them--more’s the pity!--much
less a prod. They’re cowards, rank cowards! They’ll turn tail and
run at the first British cheer we’re after giving them. We’re simply
being sent out--do you hear me?--to be sent back again. Sure, now,
when ye married me, Juley, me own darling!--you didn’t suppose ye were
taking anything but a soldier, did ye now? Killed is it? _Killed!_...
Nonsense, ma’am!--there’ll be no killin’ at all, at all! Compose
yourself, Mrs. McCreedy--for your own sake and the baby’s! Don’t you
hear me saying that they’ll simply send----Will You Be Quiet And Listen
to What I’m Telling You!” bellowed Captain Goliath, at the full pitch
of a remarkably powerful pair of lungs.
But my Aunt Julietta, unwilling to lose so favorable an opportunity,
here went into hysterics after the latest recipe published in the
pages of _The Ladies’ Mentor_, and screamed, cried, and laughed so
vigorously, that--had not the alarmed and flustered Captain seized
and applied the Cayenne pepper-castor in mistake for my Aunt’s silver
vinaigrette of Red Lavender--unfavorable results to the expected
olive-branch of the McCreedy stem might have supervened.
But my Aunt--in paroxysms of sneezing--recovered sufficiently to scold
her clumsy hero; and the Captain departed; to return towards the
small-hours in a condition which his military body-servant erroneously
described as “fresh.”
Ah, poor gentlewoman! how my Aunt winced at the coarse pleasantries of
the man, and the hiccupping genialities of the master! How many times
since she pledged to the _idol of her soul_ the _fondest vows_, etc.,
had not that idol proved himself a mere lump of sodden, heavy clay.
She dismissed Private Fahy, ungratified in the wish--audibly
expressed--for a hair of the dog that had bit the Captain--and herself
undressed her prone and wallowing warrior; got him to bed, and while he
snored, knelt beside the pillow his hoggishness defiled, and prayed to
Heaven--pure, simple, loving creature!--that War might spare him to his
wife and children, for many a long year to come!...
For the rest she was as “callum as you please, and as brave as a
_liness_” to quote the Captain; when he gave her his parting hug on
Kingstown Harbor Quay.
The month’s installment of a Serial Tale then running in _The Ladies’
Mentor_ contained a harrowing description of a similar leave-taking
between husband and wife. But it seemed to my Aunt Julietta that the
_gallant_ and _high-souled_ Colonel Reginald de la Vaux and his _young_
and _sensitive_ bride said too much--and said it too coherently to be
quite real.
They ought to have gulped out trivialities until the last minute, such
as: “Don’t forget the whisky-flask!--it’s in your great-coat pocket.”
“Not me, egad! trust a British soldier!” and “Do, now, remember,
love!--_always_ to change wet socks!” Then, as the Fifes and Drums
squealed, and company after company marched up the gangway, and the
Colors were displayed on the quarter-deck, they should have choked and
grabbed each other. And with the rasping scrub of a wet mustache upon
her mouth, and the smell of wet umbrellas and oilskins in her nostrils,
and the strains of “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” and “Cheer, Boys,
Cheer” in her ears; and the tears rolling down her cheeks as heavily
as the rain dripped from the eaves of her bonnet--as the big steamer
moved slowly, remorselessly away from the quay amidst cheering and
good-byes--my pretty Aunt was left standing in a puddle--much to the
detriment of a smart pair of velvet boots.
* * * * *
Heaven knows how long the poor soul would have stood there, but that
her children’s nurse--a Sloughshire girl, married to a private of the
Rathkeales--who made one of a group of disconsolate dripping soldiers’
wives--perching amongst piles or crates and timber-balks and coils of
tarry rope to see the last of their men--ran to her, crying wildly:
“Oh, ma’am!--ma’am!... my Tom!... Will he ever come back, do you think,
ma’am?... Shall I ever see him again?...” And my Aunt wakened out of
her desolate stupor, and took the weeping creature’s cold wet hand,
and kissed her swollen cheek, and told her: “Of course you will, Mrs.
Kennedy! They’re only sending them out to the East to send them home
again!”
* * * * *
Ensign Mortimer Jowell--who for two years now had held Her Majesty’s
Commission, did not sail with his regiment. A common, infantile
complaint, characterized by a rubious rash and yclept the measles--had
stricken the only hope of the House of Jowell down on the very
threshold of Active Service, much to his indignation and chagrin.
The young man’s bosom-friend and brother-officer Ensign Lord Adolphus
Noddlewood, marched in the uniform of a private of the Cut Red
Feathers, from the train to the Docks between two of the men of his
own company, thus avoiding a sheriff’s officer who--armed with a writ
issued by Nathan and Moss of Giltspur Street--had been sent down to
arrest this gay young nobleman.
But Morty, frying with fever and boiling with vexation, must perforce
remain a prisoner in the huge palatial four-poster in the luxurious
bedroom of the suite of private apartments which the fond father had
caused to be specially decorated and furnished for his only son at the
Jowell mansion in Hanover Square. Instead of farewell banquets washed
down with the golden, creaming nectar of Sillery and Épernay--followed
by bumpers of the Port of Carbonell--the young man perforce must
subsist on blameless slops of chicken-broth and barley-water--must be
regulated with saline doses of the cooling, nauseous, fizzy kind....
His mother presided over the medical regimen; administered the
medicines, turned the pillows--pounded into feather-pancakes by her
boy’s aching bullet-head--read him the newspaper-accounts of the
departure of his comrades--washed him--scolded him--bore with his
fevered grumblings; and--reverting to the days when the big young man
was a mere topknotted youngster in plaid frocks, diamond socks, and
strap-shoes--heard him say his nightly prayers.
In those early days referred to, young Mortimer--proving himself a
true sapling of that sterling stem of stout old British oak, his
father,--had been wont to derive profit of the solid, terrestrial
description from these orisons, by tacking on to the supplementary
petition for parents, requests for toys and treats particularly desired.
“Please God bless my mother, and make her buy me that new engine I saw
in So-and-So’s shop-window”--was naturally followed by fulfillment....
Faith is the first of the theological virtues.... What Christian mother
would have her boy grow up an atheist? Arguing thus, the poor lady
would purchase the engine; and Morty’s prayers would be without addenda
for a night, or maybe two. But before a week was over the maternal
head, this infant Samuel would be praying for a new gun or a new
puppy--and the thing would begin all over again....
To do Morty justice, he loved the meek, sad woman, despised by Jowell
as being devoid of “spirit” and “go.” She never dreamed--when her
darling went to Rugby--how many pugilistic encounters his promise of
never forgetting his daily prayers was to cost a boy whose dogged
obstinacy of nature led him to shun the concealment offered by
blankets, and persist in saying them out of bed.... It is on record
that the boys Morty pounded presently followed his example; while the
boys who pounded him had suffered so many contusions in the course of
the contest, that they had no urgent desire to provoke a renewal of war.
Do you hear the embarrassed, clumsy accents of the large young Ensign,
mumbling that simplest, noblest, and most Divine of all petitions? Do
you see that sorrowful, plain, dowdy woman, sitting in the shadow of
his sumptuous brocade bed-curtains, cherishing the big, powerful, hot
young hand?
“‘But deliver us from evil.’... And make me a good boy--no! hang it!--I
mean a good man and a good officer.... And make me well quick, and let
me get to our fellows Out There--before all the fun of the fighting’s
over!--And don’t let my mother fret and worry herself--and bring me
back safe home to her again. For Christ’s sake, Amen!”
That brought the tears, hard as the mother tried to stop
them--pattering, hot, and quick, and heavy, on her brown silk lap. She
held the big hand until his tea came--fed him with strips of toast
soaked in the blameless infusion--ere she crept away to compose herself
in the solitude of her own huge palatial bedroom, before going down to
preside over her silver teapot--set at the end of a vast expanse of
dining-table spread with the customary complements of the distinctive
British meal. The redness of her poor eyelids could not be concealed by
any innocent application of cold water and Johann-Maria-Farina, and, at
the sight of them Thompson Jowell--who came home early from the City
in these days of his son’s sickness--dropped upon the hearthrug the
newspaper he had been perusing, and--nimbly as the Zoological Society’s
Rhinoceros might have quitted his private pond in the Regent’s Park
Gardens--floundered out of his armchair.
“What the devil’s this, ma’am?” he blustered, staring at his wife
with eyes rendered even more froggishly prominent than usual by
apprehension. “You’re not going to tell me the boy’s taken a turn for
the worse, and is in danger?” He added, as she reassured him on this
point: “If you had, I wouldn’t have believed you! Tom Tough, my name
is--when it comes to a question of constitution--and my son takes after
his old Governor! But, Lord!--you’ve given me a start.”
He broke off to swab his face, and the hand that wielded the silk
bandanna handkerchief, shook quite as though the great Contractor
had been a being of common flesh and blood. It was to shake more,
erelong. For, as though that curse of Trooper Joshua Horrotian had
had real power to bring Misfortune down--strange ill-chances and
cross-happenings, eventuating from the dubious business-methods of the
parent Jowell, were to place in very frequent jeopardy the one person,
of all living beings--whom the man desired should go scot-free. For all
the gold that War would pour into his coffers, Jowell would not have
risked a hair of the head of this beloved son....
* * * * *
He had always thriven upon disaster. Mildewed harvests brought him
golden ones, even as the murrain among cattle and the rot among sheep
glutted the storehouses of Cowell with barrels of Prime Salted Beef,
and tins of First Class Preserved Mutton, for the nourishment of the
British Army. And the skins of the diseased beasts above-named, being
sold to Shoell, at a friendly lowness of price, were converted into
Boots and Saddlery and so on....
Towell and Sewell, buying whole cargoes of Damaged Cotton--salvage from
the spinning-mills that were always being set on fire and flooded with
water--and the waste of countless Woolen Manufactories--the first to
be woven into soldiers’ shirting, the second to be manufactured into
shoddy cloth of gray or blue or brick-dust-red to upholster martial
bodies withal--flourished on the same principle of Give as little as
you may and Take all you can get.
Bowell, who took over obsolete or damaged medical stores and
necessaries from Britannia’s Hospitals and Infirmaries and Workhouses,
and sold them back again without a blush upon his tallowy countenance;
Powell, who bought thousands of tons of waste and spoiled paper from
the Horse Guards and the Admiralty and other Government offices--where
paper is wasted and spoiled--and transformed it into cardboard
wherewith to strengthen busbies, shakos, helmets, and cocked-hats, and
render them proof against bullets and grape, stroke of saber or cut
of sword--were in like manner enriched at the mere cost of discomfort
to many men, and a man’s life here and there.... But until the War
broke out, and the Genius of Jowell spread its leathery bat-wings
and soared--none of these enterprising spirits had ever dreamed what
wealth, beyond the dreams of avarice, might be gathered and piled
up, at cost of misery to thousands, and innumerable lives. When they
realized this, they bowed their foreheads in the dust before the roomy
patent-leather boots of Jowell, and mumbled them. He grew great in
their eyes, and greater still. The sun rose to light his path, and set
because he had done with it for the present.... They whispered to each
other--behind their ringed and stumpy hands--that he was the devil, the
very devil, sir! And as the earthly Vicar and representative of that
dark potentate they worshiped him, having forgotten GOD.