of the tank at the bottom of the garden. His Majesty the King went to
tea, and, for the first time in his memory, the meal revolted him. His
nose was very cold, and his cheeks were burning hot. There was a weight
about his feet, and he pressed his head several times to make sure that
it was not swelling as he sat.
‘I feel vevy funny,’ said His Majesty the King, rubbing his nose.
‘Vere’s a buzz-buzz in my head.’
He went to bed quietly. Miss Biddums was out and the bearer undressed
him.
The sin of the ‘’parkle cwown’ was forgotten in the acuteness of the
discomfort to which he roused after a leaden sleep of some hours. He was
thirsty, and the bearer had forgotten to leave the drinking-water. ‘Miss
Biddums! Miss Biddums! I’m so kirsty!’
No answer. Miss Biddums had leave to attend the wedding of a Calcutta
schoolmate. His Majesty the King had forgotten that.
‘I want a dwink of water,’ he cried, but his voice was dried up in his
throat. ‘I want a dwink! Vere is ve glass?’
He sat up in bed and looked round. There was a murmur of voices from the
other side of the nursery door. It was better to face the terrible
unknown than to choke in the dark. He slipped out of bed, but his feet
were strangely wilful, and he reeled once or twice. Then he pushed the
door open and staggered—a puffed and purple-faced little figure—into the
brilliant light of the dining-room full of pretty ladies.
‘I’m vevy hot! I’m vevy uncomfitivle,’ moaned His Majesty the King,
clinging to the portière, ‘and vere’s no water in ve glass, and I’m _so_
kirsty. Give me a dwink of water.’
An apparition in black and white—His Majesty the King could hardly see
distinctly—lifted him up to the level of the table, and felt his wrists
and forehead. The water came, and he drank deeply, his teeth chattering
against the edge of the tumbler. Then every one seemed to go away—every
one except the huge man in black and white, who carried him back to his
bed; the mother and father following. And the sin of the ‘’parkle cwown’
rushed back and took possession of the terrified soul.
‘I’m a fief!’ he gasped. ‘I want to tell Miss Biddums vat I’m a fief.
Vere is Miss Biddums?’
Miss Biddums had come and was bending over him. ‘I’m a fief,’ he
whispered. ‘A fief—like ve men in ve pwison. But I’ll tell now. I
tookt—I tookt ve ’parkle cwown when ve man that came left it in ve hall.
I bwoke ve paper and ve little bwown box, and it looked shiny, and I
tookt it to play wif, and I was afwaid. It’s in ve dooly-box at ve
bottom. No one _never_ asked for it, but I was afwaid. Oh, go an’ get ve
dooly-box!’
Miss Biddums obediently stooped to the lowest shelf of the _almirah_ and
unearthed the big paper box in which His Majesty the King kept his
dearest possessions. Under the tin soldiers, and a layer of mud pellets
for a pellet-bow, winked and blazed a diamond star, wrapped roughly in a
half-sheet of notepaper whereon were a few words.
Somebody was crying at the head of the bed, and a man’s hand touched the
forehead of His Majesty the King, who grasped the packet and spread it
on the bed.
‘Vat is ve ’parkle cwown,’ he said, and wept bitterly; for now that he
had made restitution he would fain have kept the shining splendour with
him.
‘It concerns you too,’ said a voice at the head of the bed. ‘Read the
note. This is not the time to keep back anything.’
The note was curt, very much to the point, and signed by a single
initial. ‘_If you wear this to-morrow night I shall know what to
expect._’ The date was three weeks old.
A whisper followed, and the deeper voice returned: ‘And you drifted as
far apart as _that_! I think it makes us quits now, doesn’t it? Oh,
can’t we drop this folly once and for all? Is it worth it, darling?’
‘Kiss me too,’ said His Majesty the King dreamily. ‘You isn’t _vevy_
angwy, is you?’
The fever burned itself out, and His Majesty the King slept.
When he waked, it was in a new world—peopled by his father and mother as
well as Miss Biddums; and there was much love in that world and no
morsel of fear, and more petting than was good for several little boys.
His Majesty the King was too young to moralise on the uncertainty of
things human, or he would have been impressed with the singular
advantages of crime—ay, black sin. Behold, he had stolen the ‘’parkle
cwown,’ and his reward was Love, and the right to play in the
waste-paper basket under the table ‘for always.’
* * * * *
He trotted over to spend an afternoon with Patsie, and the
Commissioner’s wife would have kissed him. ‘No, not vere,’ said His
Majesty the King, with superb insolence, fencing one corner of his mouth
with his hand. ‘Vat’s my Mamma’s place—vere _she_ kisses me.’
‘Oh!’ said the Commissioner’s wife briefly. Then to herself: ‘Well, I
suppose I ought to be glad for his sake. Children are selfish little
grubs and—I’ve got my Patsie.’
THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT
In the Army List they still stand as ‘The Fore and Fit Princess
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen-Auspach’s Merthyr-Tydfilshire Own Royal Loyal
Light Infantry, Regimental District 329A,’ but the Army through all its
barracks and canteens knows them now as the ‘Fore and Aft.’ They may in
time do something that shall make their new title honourable, but at
present they are bitterly ashamed, and the man who calls them ‘Fore and
Aft’ does so at the risk of the head which is on his shoulders.
Two words breathed into the stables of a certain Cavalry Regiment will
bring the men out into the streets with belts and mops and bad language;
but a whisper of ‘Fore and Aft’ will bring out this regiment with
rifles.
Their one excuse is that they came again and did their best to finish
the job in style. But for a time all their world knows that they were
openly beaten, whipped, dumb-cowed, shaking, and afraid. The men know
it; their officers know it; the Horse Guards know it, and when the next
war comes the enemy will know it also. There are two or three regiments
of the Line that have a black mark against their names which they will
then wipe out; and it will be excessively inconvenient for the troops
upon whom they do their wiping.
The courage of the British soldier is officially supposed to be above
proof, and, as a general rule, it is so. The exceptions are decently
shovelled out of sight, only to be referred to in the freshet of
unguarded talk that occasionally swamps a Mess-table at midnight. Then
one hears strange and horrible stories of men not following their
officers, of orders being given by those who had no right to give them,
and of disgrace that, but for the standing luck of the British Army,
might have ended in brilliant disaster. These are unpleasant stories to
listen to, and the Messes tell them under their breath, sitting by the
big wood fires, and the young officer bows his head and thinks to
himself, please God, his men shall never behave unhandily.
The British soldier is not altogether to be blamed for occasional
lapses; but this verdict he should not know. A moderately intelligent
General will waste six months in mastering the craft of the particular
war that he may be waging; a Colonel may utterly misunderstand the
capacity of his regiment for three months after it has taken the field;
and even a Company Commander may err and be deceived as to the temper
and temperament of his own handful; wherefore the soldier, and the
soldier of to-day more particularly, should not be blamed for falling
back. He should be shot or hanged afterwards—to encourage the others;
but he should not be vilified in newspapers, for that is want of tact
and waste of space.
He has, let us say, been in the service of the Empress for, perhaps,
four years. He will leave in another two years. He has no inherited
morals, and four years are not sufficient to drive toughness into his
fibre, or to teach him how holy a thing is his Regiment. He wants to
drink, he wants to enjoy himself—in India he wants to save money—and he
does not in the least like getting hurt. He has received just sufficient
education to make him understand half the purport of the orders he
receives, and to speculate on the nature of clean, incised, and
shattering wounds. Thus, if he is told to deploy under fire preparatory
to an attack, he knows that he runs a very great risk of being killed
while he is deploying, and suspects that he is being thrown away to gain
ten minutes’ time. He may either deploy with desperate swiftness, or he
may shuffle, or bunch, or break, according to the discipline under which
he has lain for four years.
Armed with imperfect knowledge, cursed with the rudiments of an
imagination, hampered by the intense selfishness of the lower classes,
and unsupported by any regimental associations, this young man is
suddenly introduced to an enemy who in eastern lands is always ugly,
generally tall and hairy, and frequently noisy. If he looks to the right
and the left and sees old soldiers—men of twelve years’ service, who, he
knows, know what they are about—taking a charge, rush, or demonstration
without embarrassment, he is consoled and applies his shoulder to the
butt of his rifle with a stout heart. His peace is the greater if he
hears a senior, who has taught him his soldiering and broken his head on
occasion, whispering: ‘They’ll shout and carry on like this for five
minutes. Then they’ll rush in, and then we’ve got ’em by the short
hairs!’
But, on the other hand, if he sees only men of his own term of service
turning white and playing with their triggers, and saying: ‘What the
Hell’s up now?’ while the Company Commanders are sweating into their
sword-hilts and shouting: ‘Front-rank, fix bayonets. Steady
there—steady! Sight for three hundred—no, for five! Lie down, all!
Steady! Front-rank kneel!’ and so forth, he becomes unhappy; and grows
acutely miserable when he hears a comrade turn over with the rattle of
fire-irons falling into the fender, and the grunt of a pole-axed ox. If
he can be moved about a little and allowed to watch the effect of his
own fire on the enemy he feels merrier, and may be then worked up to the
blind passion of fighting, which is, contrary to general belief,
controlled by a chilly Devil and shakes men like ague. If he is not
moved about, and begins to feel cold at the pit of the stomach, and in
that crisis is badly mauled, and hears orders that were never given, he
will break, and he will break badly; and of all things under the light
of the Sun there is nothing more terrible than a broken British
regiment. When the worst comes to the worst and the panic is really
epidemic, the men must be e’en let go, and the Company Commanders had
better escape to the enemy and stay there for safety’s sake. If they can
be made to come again they are not pleasant men to meet; because they
will not break twice.
About thirty years from this date, when we have succeeded in
half-educating everything that wears trousers, our Army will be a
beautifully unreliable machine. It will know too much and it will do too
little. Later still, when all men are at the mental level of the officer
of to-day it will sweep the earth. Speaking roughly, you must employ
either blackguards or gentlemen, or, best of all, blackguards commanded
by gentlemen, to do butcher’s work with efficiency and despatch. The
ideal soldier should, of course, think for himself—the _Pocket-book_
says so. Unfortunately, to attain this virtue he has to pass through the
phase of thinking of himself, and that is misdirected genius. A
blackguard may be slow to think for himself, but he is genuinely anxious
to kill, and a little punishment teaches him how to guard his own skin
and perforate another’s. A powerfully prayerful Highland Regiment,
officered by rank Presbyterians, is, perhaps, one degree more terrible
in action than a hard-bitten thousand of irresponsible Irish ruffians
led by most improper young unbelievers. But these things prove the
rule—which is that the midway men are not to be trusted alone. They have
ideas about the value of life and an upbringing that has not taught them
to go on and take the chances. They are carefully unprovided with a
backing of comrades who have been shot over, and until that backing is
reintroduced, as a great many Regimental Commanders intend it shall be,
they are more liable to disgrace themselves than the size of the Empire
or the dignity of the Army allows. Their officers are as good as good
can be, because their training begins early, and God has arranged that a
clean-run youth of the British middle classes shall, in the matter of
backbone, brains, and bowels, surpass all other youths. For this reason
a child of eighteen will stand up, doing nothing, with a tin sword in
his hand and joy in his heart until he is dropped. If he dies, he dies
like a gentleman. If he lives, he writes Home that he has been ‘potted,’
‘sniped,’ ‘chipped,’ or ‘cut over,’ and sits down to besiege Government
for a wound-gratuity until the next little war breaks out, when he
perjures himself before a Medical Board, blarneys his Colonel, burns
incense round his Adjutant, and is allowed to go to the Front once more.
Which homily brings me directly to a brace of the most finished little
fiends that ever banged drum or tootled fife in the Band of a British
Regiment. They ended their sinful career by open and flagrant mutiny and
were shot for it. Their names were Jakin and Lew—Piggy Lew—and they were
bold, bad drummer-boys, both of them frequently birched by the
Drum-Major of the Fore and Aft.
Jakin was a stunted child of fourteen, and Lew was about the same age.
When not looked after, they smoked and drank. They swore habitually
after the manner of the Barrack-room, which is cold-swearing and comes
from between clinched teeth; and they fought religiously once a week.
Jakin had sprung from some London gutter and may or may not have passed
through Dr. Barnardo’s hands ere he arrived at the dignity of
drummer-boy. Lew could remember nothing except the regiment and the
delight of listening to the Band from his earliest years. He hid
somewhere in his grimy little soul a genuine love for music, and was
most mistakenly furnished with the head of a cherub: insomuch that
beautiful ladies who watched the Regiment in church were wont to speak
of him as a ‘darling.’ They never heard his vitriolic comments on their
manners and morals, as he walked back to barracks with the Band and
matured fresh causes of offence against Jakin.
The other drummer-boys hated both lads on account of their illogical
conduct. Jakin might be pounding Lew, or Lew might be rubbing Jakin’s
head in the dirt, but any attempt at aggression on the part of an
outsider was met by the combined forces of Lew and Jakin; and the
consequences were painful. The boys were the Ishmaels of the corps, but
wealthy Ishmaels, for they sold battles in alternate weeks for the sport
of the barracks when they were not pitted against other boys; and thus
amassed money.
On this particular day there was dissension in the camp. They had just
been convicted afresh of smoking, which is bad for little boys who use
plug-tobacco, and Lew’s contention was that Jakin had ‘stunk so ’orrid
bad from keepin’ the pipe in pocket,’ that he and he alone was
responsible for the birching they were both tingling under.
‘I tell you I ’id the pipe back o’ barracks,’ said Jakin pacifically.
‘You’re a bloomin’ liar,’ said Lew without heat.
‘You’re a bloomin’ little barstard,’ said Jakin, strong in the knowledge
that his own ancestry was unknown.
Now there is one word in the extended vocabulary of barrack-room abuse
that cannot pass without comment. You may call a man a thief and risk
nothing. You may even call him a coward without finding more than a boot
whiz past your ear, but you must not call a man a bastard unless you are
prepared to prove it on his front teeth.
‘You might ha’ kep’ that till I wasn’t so sore,’ said Lew sorrowfully,
dodging round Jakin’s guard.
‘I’ll make you sorer,’ said Jakin genially, and got home on Lew’s
alabaster forehead. All would have gone well and this story, as the
books say, would never have been written, had not his evil fate prompted
the Bazar-Sergeant’s son, a long, employless man of five-and-twenty, to
put in an appearance after the first round. He was eternally in need of
money, and knew that the boys had silver.
‘Fighting again,’ said he. ‘I’ll report you to my father, and he’ll
report you to the Colour-Sergeant.’
‘What’s that to you?’ said Jakin with an unpleasant dilation of the
nostrils.
‘Oh! nothing to _me_. You’ll get into trouble, and you’ve been up too
often to afford that.’
‘What the Hell do you know about what we’ve done?’ asked Lew the Seraph.
‘_You_ aren’t in the Army, you lousy, cadging civilian.’
He closed in on the man’s left flank.
‘Jes’ ’cause you find two gentlemen settlin’ their diff’rences with
their fists you stick in your ugly nose where you aren’t wanted. Run
’ome to your ’arf-caste slut of a Ma—or we’ll give you what-for,’ said
Jakin.
The man attempted reprisals by knocking the boys’ heads together. The
scheme would have succeeded had not Jakin punched him vehemently in the
stomach, or had Lew refrained from kicking his shins. They fought
together, bleeding and breathless, for half an hour, and, after heavy
punishment, triumphantly pulled down their opponent as terriers pull
down a jackal.
‘Now,’ gasped Jakin, ‘I’ll give you what-for.’ He proceeded to pound the
man’s features while Lew stamped on the outlying portions of his
anatomy. Chivalry is not a strong point in the composition of the
average drummer-boy. He fights, as do his betters, to make his mark.
Ghastly was the ruin that escaped, and awful was the wrath of the
Bazar-Sergeant. Awful, too, was the scene in Orderly-room when the two
reprobates appeared to answer the charge of half-murdering a ‘civilian.’
The Bazar-Sergeant thirsted for a criminal action, and his son lied. The
boys stood to attention while the black clouds of evidence accumulated.
‘You little devils are more trouble than the rest of the Regiment put
together,’ said the Colonel angrily. ‘One might as well admonish
thistledown, and I can’t well put you in cells or under stoppages. You
must be birched again.’
‘Beg y’ pardon, Sir. Can’t we say nothin’ in our own defence, Sir?’
shrilled Jakin.
‘Hey! What? Are you going to argue with _me_?’ said the Colonel.
‘No, Sir,’ said Lew. ‘But if a man come to you, Sir, and said he was
going to report you, Sir, for ’aving a bit of a turn-up with a friend,
Sir, an’ wanted to get money out o’ _you_, Sir——’
The Orderly-room exploded in a roar of laughter. ‘Well?’ said the
Colonel.
‘That was what that measly _jarnwar_ there did, Sir, and ’e’d ’a’ _done_
it, Sir, if we ’adn’t prevented ’im. We didn’t ’it ’im much, Sir. ’E
’adn’t no manner o’ right to interfere with us, Sir. I don’t mind bein’
birched by the Drum-Major, Sir, nor yet reported by _any_ Corp’ral, but
I’m—but I don’t think it’s fair, Sir, for a civilian to come an’ talk
over a man in the Army.’
A second shout of laughter shook the Orderly-room, but the Colonel was
grave.
‘What sort of characters have these boys?’ he asked of the Regimental
Sergeant-Major.
‘Accordin’ to the Bandmaster, Sir,’ returned that revered official—the
only soul in the regiment whom the boys feared—‘they do everything _but_
lie, Sir.’
‘Is it like we’d go for that man for fun, Sir?’ said Lew, pointing to
the plaintiff.
‘Oh, admonished—admonished!’ said the Colonel testily, and when the boys
had gone he read the Bazar-Sergeant’s son a lecture on the sin of
unprofitable meddling, and gave orders that the Bandmaster should keep
the Drums in better discipline.
‘If either of you comes to practice again with so much as a scratch on
your two ugly little faces,’ thundered the Bandmaster, ‘I’ll tell the
Drum-Major to take the skin off your backs. Understand that, you young
devils.’
Then he repented of his speech for just the length of time that Lew,
looking like a Seraph in red worsted embellishments, took the place of
one of the trumpets—in hospital—and rendered the echo of a battle-piece.
Lew certainly was a musician, and had often in his more exalted moments
expressed a yearning to master every instrument of the Band.
‘There’s nothing to prevent your becoming a Bandmaster, Lew,’ said the
Bandmaster, who had composed waltzes of his own, and worked day and
night in the interests of the Band.
‘What did he say?’ demanded Jakin after practice.
‘’Said I might be a bloomin’ Bandmaster, an’ be asked in to ’ave a glass
o’ sherry-wine on Mess-nights.’
‘Ho! ’Said you might be a bloomin’ non-combatant, did ’e! That’s just
about wot ’e would say. When I’ve put in my boy’s service—it’s a
bloomin’ shame that doesn’t count for pension—I’ll take on as a privit.
Then I’ll be a Lance in a year—knowin’ what I know about the ins an’
outs o’ things. In three years I’ll be a bloomin’ Sergeant. I won’t
marry then, not I! I’ll ’old on and learn the orf’cers’ ways an’ apply
for exchange into a reg’ment that doesn’t know all about me. Then I’ll
be a bloomin’ orf’cer. Then I’ll ask you to ’ave a glass o’ sherry-wine,
_Mister_ Lew, an’ you’ll bloomin’ well ’ave to stay in the hanty-room
while the Mess-Sergeant brings it to your dirty ’ands.’
‘’S’po se I’m going to be a Bandmaster? Not I, quite. I’ll be a orf’cer
too. There’s nothin’ like taking to a thing an’ stickin’ to it, the
Schoolmaster says. The reg’ment don’t go ’ome for another seven years.
I’ll be a Lance then or near to.’
Thus the boys discussed their futures, and conducted themselves piously
for a week. That is to say, Lew started a flirtation with the
Colour-Sergeant’s daughter, aged thirteen—‘not,’ as he explained to
Jakin, ‘with any intention o’ matrimony, but by way o’ keepin’ my ’and
in.’ And the black-haired Cris Delighan enjoyed that flirtation more
than previous ones, and the other drummer-boys raged furiously together,
and Jakin preached sermons on the dangers of ‘bein’ tangled along o’
petticoats.’
But neither love nor virtue would have held Lew long in the paths of
propriety had not the rumour gone abroad that the Regiment was to be
sent on active service, to take part in a war which, for the sake of
brevity, we will call ‘The War of the Lost Tribes.’
The barracks had the rumour almost before the Mess-room, and of all the
nine hundred men in barracks not ten had seen a shot fired in anger. The
Colonel had, twenty years ago, assisted at a Frontier expedition; one of
the Majors had seen service at the Cape; a confirmed deserter in E
Company had helped to clear streets in Ireland; but that was all. The
Regiment had been put by for many years. The overwhelming mass of its
rank and file had from three to four years’ service; the
non-commissioned officers were under thirty years old; and men and
sergeants alike had forgotten to speak of the stories written in brief
upon the Colours—the New Colours that had been formally blessed by an
Archbishop in England ere the Regiment came away.