IN THE BARRACK-ROOM.
Within twenty-four hours of his arrival in barracks, Herbert
Larkins was bathed, cropped, clothed, numbered, and, so to
speak, put away. His ‘rags,’ in plain English, his civilian
clothes--invariably so called whether undeniable garments or
veritable rags--had been exchanged for uniform, such as it was. A
recruit, and especially in the fall of the year, when the annual
issue of new clothing is near at hand, gets only things ‘part
worn.’ So Herbert’s shell jacket, his regimental trousers, and his
ammunition boots, were all of them palpable misfits.
He said as much to the corporal of the pioneers, who helped the
quartermaster-sergeant in rigging out recruits.
‘Too large?’ replied the corporal, contemptuously. ‘Wait till
you’re at the extension motions, or at club drill, and you’ll wish
they were more than twice as big.’
‘But my trousers are too long, and--’
‘It’ll be longer before you get another pair. Besides, you ain’t
done growing yet. Two months on full rations, and you’ll be as tall
as a hop-pole. How do you think your legs ’d look then? Showing
half a yard of sock above the high-lows, and the captain ’d be safe
to put you down for a new pair of bags.’
‘And these boots are far too loose. I can’t feel the sides even.’
‘You’ll feel something else afore long, I can tell you, and not
half so soft as leather. Them boots! Why, flash Alick Nokes wore
them till he went “out”--and it ’d take a dozen Johnny Raws like
you to make half a soldier such as him.’
Yet Herbert had really some reason to be discontented with his
personal appearance. Always a trim and dapper youth, his patroness,
Lady Farrington, had loved to see him neatly dressed, and had
cheerfully paid his tailor’s bills when at Deadham school. But
now, speaking exactly, he was not dressed at all; his figure was
only concealed with clothes. His jacket was baggy at the back;
the arms were so long that the cuffs came as far as his knuckles;
his trousers, if they had been tied in at the ankle, would have
suited a Janissary Turk; his forage-cap--it was before the days
of smart glengarries--not yet ‘blocked’ and set up, fell like a
black pudding-bag, over one forehead and one ear. His boots were
quite amorphous, quite without form, and they might have been
void were it not probable they encased a pair of feet shaped like
wedges of Cheshire cheese. So deteriorating was the effect of these
incongruous habiliments, that Herbert Larkins seemed to lose his
erect bearing and springy step; and as he reached the barrack-room,
to which he was presently marched, carrying his kit-bag full of
cleaning utensils under one arm, and his new knapsack under the
other, he hung his head and looked utterly ashamed of himself.
‘Oh! it’s you is it?’ said the sergeant in charge of the room, who
took him over from the corporal of the pioneers.
Herbert recognised the sergeant with whom he had had the colloquy
at the barrack-gate.
‘So you got past the gate, did you? Mind you stop, now you’ve got
in. Don’t try and run off again with your bounty and kit.’
The suspicious sergeant scented a probable deserter.
‘I shouldn’t have come in if I’d wanted to go out directly
afterwards,’ Herbert plucked up courage to say; but the scene was
so new, and he felt so forlorn in his loneliness and his strange
new clothes, that he had not much spirit left in him.
‘Don’t answer me with cheek,’ cried the sergeant, very sharply. ‘I
want none of your slack jaw or back jaw. Hold your tongue, that’s
what you’ve got to do, and do as you’re bid.’
‘Now look here,’ he went on, after a pause; ‘there’s your bed, and
that’s your shelf; mind you keep them clean and proper. Don’t you
try to lie down on the one before the right time, nor put what
ain’t authorised on the other. You’ll be for recruits’ drill
at six sharp to-morrow; don’t let me have to tell you twice to
turn out, and mind you don’t get straying away so that you can’t
answer your name at tattoo roll-call to-night. Mind, too, what
your comrade says; I’ll tell you off to Boy Hanlon because you’re
much of an age; mind him and what he tells you, and he’ll keep you
straight. Lads’--this to the room--‘have any of you seen “the Boy”?’
‘No, sergeant, not these hours past. He’s in the usual place, I’ll
go bail.’
‘The canteen?’
Some of the men laughed and nodded, and the sergeant went off in
search.
No one took any notice of Herbert, as he sat upon the edge of his
iron cot at the far end of the room. Everybody seemed busy with his
own affairs.
But presently some one near the door shouted, ‘Why, here’s “the
Boy”! Duke’s Own! “’Tchun,”’ giving the word of command as though
an officer was approaching.
It was only a wizened little man, who might have been fifty or
barely five. He hadn’t a hair on his fresh coloured cheeks, but
they were much wrinkled as though he were prematurely aged.
Boy Hanlon was one of the oldest soldiers in the regiment. He had
been in it all his life from the time they had picked him up like a
waif or stray on the line of march between Exeter and Plymouth till
now, when he had upwards of twenty years’ service, and was growing
grey-haired. He had begun as a boy in the band, thence he went to
the drums; by-and-bye he became a bugler, from which, although
barely of the standard height, he had been passed into the ranks.
Now, as a veteran who knew his rights and what was due to himself,
he gave himself great airs. No one was half so well acquainted as
he was with professional topics. He could tell you the names of all
the officers past and present, in the Duke’s Own; he was a keen
critic upon drill from his own point of view--somewhere in the
rear rank of one of the central companies; he could pipeclay belts
to perfection, and had not his equal with brass ball, heel ball,
boot-blacking, button stick and brush. But the chief source of his
pride were his confidential relations with Colonel Prioleau, the
present commanding officer. The two had ‘soldiered’ together all
these years, in every clime, and knew each other thoroughly. More,
they had stood side by side at the battle of Goojerat, where the
Duke’s Own had fought remarkably well, and they were the only two
survivors of that glorious day. ‘Boy’ Hanlon--he got his soubriquet
of course from his insignificant size--traded a good deal on that
battle of Goojerat. He was perpetually celebrating the victory. For
one single battle it had an extraordinary number of anniversaries.
Whenever ‘the Boy’ was thirsty--and with him drought was
perennial--he turned up at the orderly room and told the colonel it
was a fine morning ‘for the day.’
‘What day?’ old Prioleau would ask with pretended ignorance,
although he knew and really enjoyed the joke.
‘The great day, of course, colonel; the day of Goojerat.’
‘Why, it was that only three weeks ago; surely--’
‘Well, sir, we’re the only two Goojeraties left, you know, sir, and
I’d like to drink your health.’
It always ended in the same way--the transfer of half-a-crown from
the colonel to ‘the Boy;’ the speedy exchange of the whole sum into
liquor, the most potent description preferred, a free fight, for
‘the Boy’ was quarrelsome in his cups, a temporary relegation to
the guard-room, from which he was sure to be immediately released
by the officer of the day. When Hanlon misconducted himself he
always got off scot free. Colonel Prioleau would never punish ‘the
Boy.’
‘Where’s my towney?’ Hanlon asked directly he entered the room.
They pointed to where Herbert sat disconsolate; and the dapper
little soldier, who was still trim in figure, and straight as a
dart, walked over to the lad and gave him a friendly pat on the
back.
‘Now, young chap, you must brush up, brush up, and show yourself
a man. We’ve to be comrades, you and I, and it won’t suit me to
consort with a chap as is given to peek and pine. What do you call
yourself?’
This was delicately put. Recruits do not always enlist under their
own names; so Hanlon asked, not what Herbert was called, but what
he called himself.
‘Herbert Larkins.’
‘Good; and not a bad looking chap either. Too tall--leastwise I’m
afraid you’re going to grow--’
Hanlon, like many little men, hated those whose inches far exceeded
his own. In the days when there had been grenadiers, it was his
favourite pastime, when at all the worse for liquor, to beard
the giants in their own barrack-room. He called them ‘hop-poles,’
‘sand-bags,’ ‘wooden ramrods,’ and other opprobrious names, and
his onslaughts generally ended in his being carried, bodily, to
the guard-room, under some stalwart soldier’s arm. Now that the
grenadier company was abolished, he disseminated his dislike, and
abused every private who was more that five feet six in height.
‘Too tall, unless you stop as you are. Gin perhaps’d do it; or
whiskey; or perhaps “four” ale--if you took enough of it. Fond of
“four” ale, eh?’
Hanlon’s eyes glistened with a toper’s joy as he mentioned his
favourite fluid.
‘Ah! there’s nothing like “four” ale. I’m under stoppages myself,’
he went on, meditatively, ‘or I’d stand treat. But you’ll have got
your bounty, and the money for your “coloured” clothes. You ain’t
got the price of a glass about you?’
Herbert admitted readily enough that he had the price of several.
He had lost none of his schoolboy freehandedness, and he had
moreover the wit to see that his new comrade might, if propitiated,
prove an uncommonly useful friend.
Hanlon first made Herbert swallow some piping hot tea which was
brought in just then, and gave him the whole of his ‘tea’ bread;
Hanlon’s own appetite was indifferent; and then the two, amid the
winks and jeers of the rest, strolled over to the canteen. The
place was not over full. Nothing stronger than ale and porter
could be sold in it, and the Duke’s Own generally preferred the
Triggertown taverns. So would Hanlon, but he knew that a newly
enlisted recruit would not be permitted to leave barracks.
They had a quart ‘of the best;’ Hanlon called for it--and drank
it, all but a glass; a second quart followed, and a third; and
as the little veteran became more and more steeped in liquor he
grew more and more communicative. He told Herbert all about the
regiment; who were the chief personages in it; he spoke with awe
of the sergeant-major, but of the colonel as a familiar friend.
He described the ways of the officers, the habits and customs of
the regiment, the chances there were of promotion for a smart lad
who’d had any schooling and knew how to keep himself straight. ‘Can
you read? good--and write? better still. If you can only cipher
and do accounts you won’t have long to wait for a lance stripe.
I’ll get it for you, aye and more too. I’ll get you put in the
orderly-room as a clerk, or perhaps the pay office. You shall be a
colour-sergeant before you’re many years older; who knows, perhaps
you’ll be sergeant-major afore you die. All through Joe Hanlon;
poor old Joe Hanlon--Letshavesmoreale.’
From Hanlon drunk to Hanlon sober there was a great distance.
The big promises he made so freely in his cups were all of
them forgotten next day. Yet the little man was, in his way, a
good friend to Herbert Larkins. In the days, arduous and often
wearisome, of the recruit’s novitiate, the old soldier acted always
as mentor and adviser. He taught Herbert all he knew. He helped
him with his exercises, rehearsing the manual and platoon in the
privacy of the citadel ditch, so that Herbert soon won especial
favour with the drill instructor of his squad; he took a pride in
Herbert’s personal appearance, arranged a ‘swop’ for the misfitting
jacket and highlows, contracted with one of the regimental tailors
to alter the baggy trousers in his spare hours.
‘I’ll make you the smartest soldier in the Duke’s Own,’ said ‘the
Boy’ enthusiastically. ‘You’re the right stuff; you’ve got it in
you; you’re a soldier born, every inch. I don’t ask no questions. I
don’t want to know who you are, or where you comes from, but you’ve
got soldier’s blood in you; you come of a soldier’s stock, I’ll
wager a gallon of the best four ale. I like you, lad. You’re free
handed and open spoken, and you’ve got an honest mug of your own. I
like you, and I’ll stick to you through thick and thin.’
The advantages of Boy Hanlon’s counsel and protection were soon
apparent. Herbert, thanks to Hanlon’s coaching, but aided not a
little by his own native intelligence, and the excellent education
he had received, proved an apt scholar in the military school.
He soon learnt his drill, and was passed for duty much more
quickly than was usually the case with recruits. Mr. Farrington,
who had commenced drill at the same time, but who enjoyed the
officer’s privilege of taking it easy, and who was somewhat slow
of apprehension to boot, was still at company drill when Private
Larkins, fully accoutred, and admirably ‘turned out,’ took his
place in the ranks on guard, mounting parade.
It was with a beating heart that he found Mr. Wheeler, the
adjutant, in making his minute and critical inspection, pause just
in front of him.
‘Fall out,’ said the adjutant curtly; and Herbert scarcely knew
whether to expect praise or blame.
‘Colonel’s orderly. Report yourself at his quarters after parade.’
Here was an honour indeed! To be selected on his first
guard-mounting parade, as commanding officer’s orderly--a post
which, apart from the privileges it brought of immunity from
‘sentry go’ and a sure night’s rest in bed, every private soldier
in the regiment coveted and esteemed--was a compliment which
Herbert, and Hanlon also, appreciated to the full.
What befell the young orderly at Colonel Prioleau’s quarters must
be reserved for another chapter.