MUTINY IN THE RANKS.
There was great grief in the Duke’s Own. Colonel Prioleau was
about to leave the regiment. He had commanded it for a number of
years, and would have liked to have gone on commanding it to the
end of the chapter, but promotion to the rank of general was fast
approaching him, and he felt that he must ‘realise’ at least a
part of his cash. Colonels of regiments in old days served for
about tenpence a-day. The rest of their pay barely represented the
interest upon the capital sum they had sunk in purchasing their
rank. By exchanging to half-pay before promotion, a regimental
lieutenant-colonel was able to pull a few thousands out of the
fire; and this Colonel Prioleau did.
There was great grief in the regiment at his approaching
retirement. It was not so much on account of his personal
qualities, although these--more particularly his easy-going
_laissez aller_ system--had long gained him great popularity, but
because the command was to pass into the hands of one who was not,
as the saying is, a ‘Duke’s Own man.’ Major Byfield had exchanged
into the corps some few years previously, very much against the
will of the regiment. Not that there was anything against him.
Appearances were indeed in his favour. He was a quiet gentlemanly
little person, with that slightly apologetic manner, and hesitating
air, which often earn a man appreciation from his fellows, because
they indicate a tacit acknowledgment of his inferiority. Major
Byfield showed himself still more nervous and undecided on joining
the Duke’s Own. Although as a field officer his position was
assured, and entitled him to considerable deference from all, he
seldom claimed it or asserted himself more than he could help. His
brother officers tolerated him, and were civil to him when they
saw him, which was not often; but they yielded him no respect,
and suffered him to interfere very little in the discipline and
management of the corps. What could he know about the Duke’s Own,
or its regimental ‘system?’ He had come from the 130th which,
it was well known, had a very different ‘system,’ although both
were, in fact, ruled by the Queen’s Regulations, and should have
been governed on precisely the same lines. There is a good deal
of mystery made and much stress laid upon the ‘system’ in force
in a regiment. No doubt in many minor details there is a marked
difference, but the broad outlines are, or ought to be, the same.
But it is a favourite dogma, especially with officers in whom
_esprit de corps_ is strong, that no one can understand this system
unless he has been trained in a regiment and assimilated it with
his earliest ideas. So when the major spoke even in a whisper, or
made the faintest hint of a suggestion, he was pooh-poohed and put
down. Diggle, his fellow, although junior field officer, quietly
said that it was all nonsense, that Byfield misunderstood the
situation, that he had better wait till he had longer experience in
the regiment before he presumed to put forward his views.
Major Byfield was thus satisfactorily repressed--but only for the
time. He had views and opinions of his own upon soldiering, and
he was determined when opportunity came to give them full play.
They had long persistently preached up and paraded before him
the system in force in the Duke’s Own, but he had for as long
come to the conclusion that the system was a bad one, and was
resolved to reform it should he ever come into power. His character
was a strange medley of opposite qualities. Behind the nervous
diffidence, which being upon the surface seemed his most prominent
trait, was an amount of quiet self-opinionated obstinacy which
boded ill for those under his orders should he ever have much
authority in his hands. Mrs. Byfield could have opened people’s
eyes had she been permitted to disclose the secrets of the Byfield
_ménage_. The major was as narrow-minded as a woman, and as
prone to mistake the relative proportion of things, to entirely
ignore the main issues, to neglect or overlook broad questions,
and concentrate himself with much tenacity upon comparatively
unimportant details.
These peculiarities began to develop themselves very soon after
he obtained the command. It became evident that the new colonel
was a different man from what was supposed. He had been deemed a
cipher--one who could hardly call his soul his own; but he proved a
fussy, fidgetty, anxious creature, who from nervous apprehension,
backed up by no small amount of self-conceit, promised to make
everybody’s life a burden to him. The officers as a body began to
fear that the good old times were on the wane. The decadence of
the Duke’s Own must have fairly commenced when leave for hunting
was refused and there were two commanding officers’ parades on
the same day. The fact was, the Colonel had resolved to reform the
regiment according to his own ideas, and had already set to work
with a will. The points on which it fell short of perfection were
very clear to his own mind--a weak, but extremely active mind. He
thought the officers neglected their business and knew too little
of it--facts incontrovertible no doubt, although the remedy was
not easy to discover, and needed stronger treatment than Colonel
Byfield was in a position to apply. He felt dissatisfied, too,
with the demeanour of the men in quarters and on parade, and if it
was more within his compass to bring about improvement in these
respects, his task was likely to be surrounded with the greater
difficulty if his officers were discontented and soured. But the
Colonel could not see much beyond the end of his nose, and rushed
forward blindly to his fate.
To come in for a large share of criticism, not to say abuse, from
those under his orders, is too commonly the lot of the regimental
lieutenant-colonel. Colonel Byfield was no exception to the general
rule. Before he had been in command a month, his officers generally
began to disapprove of his proceedings; after three, they disliked
him cordially; and this grew into positive hatred at the end of
six. Of course they kept their opinions very much to themselves.
English officers, however grievous their wrongs, whether real
or fancied, never overstep the bounds of due subordination; and
however much those of the Duke’s Own may have chafed at their
commanding officer’s trying ways and irksome rule, they did no
more than call him a ‘beast’ to one another, and utter frequent
and fervid, but private prayers for his translation to some
other sphere in this world or the next. They bore their burden
bravely enough, silently too and without protest, except when some
graceless subaltern or more artful captain wilfully exhibited an
utter ignorance of the very rudiments of drill by clubbing his
company upon parade, or comported himself disgracefully at the
weekly examinations--offences especially heinous in the eyes of
a Colonel whose greatest ‘fad’ was to make his officers walking
_vade mecums_ or living encyclopædias of military knowledge. The
schoolmaster was abroad in the Duke’s Own, very much to everyone’s
discomfort and dissatisfaction.
Excessive timidity, an exaggerated fear of constituted authority,
were the secrets of Colonel Byfield’s irritating line of conduct.
He was for ever invoking the distant deities of the Horse Guards,
and deprecating their wrath. As for their local chief priest,
the general officer commanding the Triggertown district, whose
authority was much more tangible and near at hand, Colonel Byfield
had for him the most wholesome and abject apprehension. It was to
appease the possible fury of this awful functionary that he worried
and harassed the regiment from morning till night.
‘What will the general say?’ or ‘What will the general do?’ were
phrases continually on his lips. He forgot that, as a matter of
fact, the general, who was an ordinary general, would probably say
or do nothing at all. But this professional ‘Jorkins’ was quoted on
every occasion.
‘I cannot overlook your misconduct,’ he would say to Joe Hanlon,
when brought up for the thousandth time for being drunk. ‘The
general won’t let me.’
‘As if the general cared,’ muttered ‘the Boy’ to himself.
‘I must punish you; I must, indeed.’
‘Colonel Prioleau never did, sir; and I hope, sir--’
‘Colonel Prioleau is not here now, and I don’t choose to be spoken
to in that way. Fourteen days’ marching order drill; and if you
come here again, I’ll try you for “Habitual”--I will, mark my
words.’
‘What’s the good of serving on in the old corps now?’ said Hanlon,
very wroth, after he had done his defaulter’s drill. ‘It’s not what
it used to be. I’ll put in for my discharge.’
He was fully entitled to it. Twenty-one years’ service, all told.
Five good-conduct badges, less one, which his recent misconduct
had robbed him of; for with old soldiers it is strength of head, or
immunity from punishment that brings reputation; and Hanlon, thanks
to Colonel Prioleau’s good nature, had the credit of being one of
the best behaved men in the regiment.
‘I won’t stay to be humbugged about,’ he said, indignantly, to his
comrade Herbert. ‘I’ll take my pension and look out for a billet in
civil life.’
‘What can you get to do?’
‘Lots of things. Commissionaire, prison warder, attendant in a
lunatic ’sylum.’
Herbert pricked up his ears.
‘Do you think you could get the last? I wish you would, and I’ll
tell you why. You’ve never heard my story?’
Whereupon Herbert told it all.
‘I knew you was a nob from the first. I saw it in your talk and in
the cut of your jib. Dr. Plum’s of Greystone, you say. Right you
are. That’s where I’ll go. To-morrow, if not sooner, and I’ll give
you the office--double quick. Hold on a bit, that’s all you’ve got
to do; hold on, and do your duty, and it’ll all come right in the
end. And see here--’
Hanlon looked about him, as if afraid of listeners.
‘Things ain’t comfortable in the old corps, not just now; and
there’s going to be a row. They won’t let on to you,’cos you’re
a non-com, and what’s more, only a recruit. There’s men in the
regiment mean mischief, if they only get the chance; and if they
don’t, they’ll make it, sure as my name’s Joe.’
‘What can they do?’
‘They don’t think or care. All they want is a rumpus, so as to get
old Byfield in trouble and make him leave, and that they’ll be
able to do. Don’t join them, not whatever they say. Keep your ears
cocked, and nip in--only on the right side.’
Hanlon had taken his discharge and got the promise of a billet at
Dr. Plum’s, when the storm actually broke in the Duke’s Own.
Colonel Byfield had been agitated beyond measure at the news of the
approaching move of his regiment to one of the large camps, and
in view of the scrutiny which there awaited him his petty tyranny
had passed all bounds. He had parades morning, noon, and night.
He exercised the men _ad nauseam_ at squad drill, goose step, and
the manual and platoon. He marched them perpetually in battalion
up and down the barrack yard, and he took them out day after day
upon Triggertown Common for light infantry drill. All this, albeit
torture of the most painful description, they could have tolerated
probably without a murmur had not the Colonel, dissatisfied with
the progress made, sentenced the regiment to be deprived of all
leave in all ranks.
This was the point at which the worm turned. One fine morning,
long after the ‘dressing’ bugle had sounded, followed by the
‘non-commissioned officers call’ and the ‘fall-in,’ not a man made
his appearance upon parade. Colonel Byfield and the officers had
the whole square to themselves. The rest of the regiment with the
exception of a number of men belonging to one company, F, formed
up in the ditch, and while the commanding officer was whistling at
vacancy, marched off in excellent order to a distant part of the
glacis, where they piled arms and refused to return.
It would be tedious, and it indeed forms no part of this history to
narrate, except in the briefest terms, the progress of this very
serious military _lâche_. The men, as is usual in such cases, went
to the wall. The ringleaders were hunted out, tried and severely
punished, and the whole regiment was ordered to proceed on foreign
service forthwith. The causes which had led to the disturbance were
closely investigated, and as a natural consequence Colonel Byfield
was placed upon half-pay.
It was for a long time doubtful whether Diggle, who was the next
senior, should be allowed to succeed to the command; but he brought
all the interest he could to bear, and he eventually won the day.
As Colonel Diggle, commanding a corps really distinguished,
although temporarily under a cloud, he found Sir Rupert Farrington
not indisposed to accept his proposals for Letitia; and the
marriage came off just before the regiment embarked for Gibraltar.
It was at Farrington Hall that the conversation turning, as it had
done more than once before, upon the recent mutiny, brought our
hero, Herbert Larkins, prominently to the front.
‘The movement was not general, certainly not,’ Diggle had said.
‘One of the companies, F, Ernest’s in fact, did not take any share
in it.’
‘Does Ernest deserve the credit of that?’
‘Not exactly. It was due rather to an astute young corporal, who
quietly locked the doors of the men’s rooms. They couldn’t get out
to join.’
‘Really? He was promoted, of course?’
‘Yes; he is now a sergeant, and is sure to get on. Oh yes, young
Larkins is sure to get on.’
‘It was young Larkins, was it?’
‘Do you know him?’
‘I think I do. I will tell you about it one of these days.’
Diggle, as one of the Farrington family, would soon have a right to
know.