THE "MAID AND THE MAGPIE."
I was immediately placed upright against the sergeant's pike, on the
shaft of which were accurately notched the number of feet and inches
which formed the standard height for recruits in his Majesty's Twenty
First Foot. Though considerably below the required gage, as a
growing lad, I passed the ordeal, and ere mid-day, with a few other
aspirants for fame and Chelsea, was duly attested by a jolly,
red-faced rector, who was a J.P. in that Riding of Yorkshire. Two
guineas of bounty were then paid to me, and in the evening, with the
sergeant, Corporal Mahoney, the drummers, &c., and a few more
recruits, I found myself enthroned on a table at the "Maid and the
Magpie," spending my newly-acquired pieces of gold with singular
facility; and more likely to become a bibber than a Hannibal, as I
strove to drown care and extract recklessness from brandy and tobacco.
A crowd of bumpkins and idlers filled the large wainscotted
smoking-room of the old-fashioned inn, which Sergeant Drumbirrel had
made his head-quarters; and as red-coats were seldom seen in the
rural district of Compton Rennel, our redoubtable halberdier, who had
all the _bonhommie_, acuteness, and confidence requisite for a
complete recruiting sergeant, found himself acknowledged king of the
company. He was a tall and handsome fellow, about forty years of
age; his hair was already becoming grey, and his face lined by years
of hard drinking and hard service in America and the tropics; and his
staple subjects for conversation were his personal exploits in the
fields of Mars and Venus,--stories in which he usually stood
prominently forward,--thus: how, by following _his_ friendly hints,
Burgoyne beat the French on the banks of the Hudson; and how on
another occasion he bilked an innkeeper at Chatham; for he deemed one
exploit quite as worthy of consideration as the other.
He knew all the tricks of the recruiting service; enabled recruits to
pass the standard by false scalps and glued cork heels, and made no
secret of his art before his auditors. While he imbibed and
expressed a hearty contempt for all civilians; he deemed it quite as
much his duty to trepan as to enlist them; thus, by his own account,
he had brought many gallant fellows into his Majesty's service by
deluding them into an exchange of clothes with him, taking care to
leave a _shilling_ in one of the pockets; on the discovery of which,
he desired the wearer to keep it in the king's name, and marched him
straight to the nearest J.P. for attestation. He had freely
proffered commissions, enlisting many as captains, colonels, and
knights of the Bath and Garter; he had slipped "the shilling" into a
bumpkin's pocket, or into his hand when shaking it, and then sworn in
a whole vocabulary of oaths that it was given in the name of his
Majesty.
From time to time, the health of the latter was drunk at my expense,
with great vociferation and loyalty, the sergeant sitting the while
at the head of a long bare table, armed with a huge Toby-tosspot jug
(formed like a little squat man in boots, with a three-cocked hat,
each angle of which was a mouth-piece); it was full of ruddy, foaming
ale,--Yorkshire home-brewed.
"Are you wise," I whispered, "to let out all the secrets of your art
before these fellows?"
"Wise, lad?" said he, "I never was wise, and 'tis too late to learn
wisdom now; besides, what is the use of being wise? 'Tis better far
to be jolly."
"But those who overhear you----"
"May go and be hanged," said he; "our beating order expires to-night,
and to-morrow we march for Hull to join the regiment, and I don't
care how soon we embark; for I begin to tire alike of barrack life,
recruiting, and garrison duty."
"Hurrah! the sooner we embark the better," said I, with a shout; for
now the fumes of liquor, tobacco, and the general odour of the room
itself, were overpowering, while the noise, confusion, singing,
quarrelling, and the voices of women lamenting the enlistment of
sons, brothers, and lovers, made up a Babel, from which I could not
escape, as Sergeant Drumbirrel was too old a soldier to trust a
recruit for an instant out of his sight, until he was duly "turned
over" to the staff at head-quarters.
"Oh, stay at home, my dear--dear son," exclaimed a poor old woman
imploringly to a tipsy rustic, whose wide-awake hat was adorned by
the tricoloured streamers of the gallant 21st; "stay at home with
your old mother, who loves you so well, and do not go to the
sodgering, leaving her to starvation and grief."
Though applied to another, these words sank deeply and bitterly into
my own heart; but it was too late to retreat now. The bumpkin to
whom she spoke tore off his gay cockade, and began to weep like a
huge tipsy boy as he was.
"Here, you young devil, take a pull of this," said the sergeant,
proffering his foaming jug. "Mother of Moses! wait, old lady, till
you see your son in his red coat and captain's _epaulettes_. The
first duke that has any live stock in the shape of scampering
daughters will have him to dinner directly. Hurrah for the old 21st!
Keep up your hearts, my boys, for here are the sinews of war!"
With these words he refreshed us all, by displaying a handful of
guineas, which, however, were not his own, but the marching money of
the whole party. This timely display silenced the regrets of all,
save one young fellow, upon whose shoulder a very pretty girl hung,
and wept bitterly.
"Is this your sweetheart?" asked the sergeant, whose rubicund visage
expressed a curious combination of commiseration and disgust.
"Yes," replied the recruit angrily, for he now viewed our commander
as his tempter and enemy.
"Well, our colonel does not approve of married men on foreign
service, so you may as well transfer her to some one else."
"Tony--my dear Tony!" sobbed the girl.
"So you're in love, my girl," continued the sergeant; "get out of it
as soon as you can, for your Tony is a fusilier now, and love rarely
survives a change of quarters. I have done a little in the
love-making way myself, and speak from experience."
"Love, like destiny, should be fixed, unchanging," said I,
enthusiastically, as I thought of poor little Amy Lee.
"Desthiny," reiterated Mahony, our Irish corporal; "and what the
divil's that?"
"Our fate in life."
"I've known what _fate_ were on the line o' march in Flanders, when
my boots pinched--is it that ye mane?"
"Fate," said Drumbirrel, ponderingly--"don't know much about it. I
know that every bullet has its billet--a saying we have in the
army--and it comes pretty much to the same thing. But be jolly,
youngsters, and you may all come in time to the _halbert_," he added,
with a wink which made all the soldiers laugh, as his speech
contained an allusion known to them alone.
"Thunder and blazes!" exclaimed Corporal Mahony "here is that
unbelieving fifer ating mate on a Friday, like a heretical
Protestant."
"Well, there's no fast to the _poteen_--glory be to God!" replied the
fifer, who was his countryman; "so fire away, my boys, till the
butt-end of the morning."
"Silence all!" commanded the sergeant, who seemed literally to live
on tobacco-smoke and brandy-and-water; "silence for a song, or I'll
knock the dominoes out of your jaws with my halbert--and, drummer,
brace up, for an accompaniment."
With these words he struck up a rollicking barrack-room ditty of the
day, in the prolonged "Tol-de-rol-lol" of which the whole party
joined, and the drum was added, so that the din, with the clattering
of jugs on the table, and iron heels on the floor, was tremendous.
Behold poor Will, just come from drill,
'Twas only last night I enlisted;
I sold my cart to pay the smart,
But money King George resisted!
I know not what my fate may be,
Yet think it mighty odd, sirs,
That a lad so trim and smart as me
Should be in the awkward squad, sirs!
Tolderol, lol, lol, &c.
Perhaps a recruit may chance to shoot
The great citizen Bonaparte, sirs--
Our halberdier, who had become considerably the worse of his
potations, here became inarticulate; and would have fallen off his
chair, but was recovered by Corporal Mahony (a prompt doctor on such
occasions), who, in five minutes, sobered him by pouring down his
throat a little tea, dashed with strong vinegar.
The society among which I was thrown sickened, and the drunken uproar
almost deafened, me; thus I gladly retired to my pallet, in a
miserable garret, which was allotted to the corporal and myself.
Drumbirrel, having discovered, through the medium of his
brandy-and-water, that the blowsy landlady was absolutely beautiful,
lingered behind.
Overcome by the effects of his recent orgie, Mahoney soon dropped
asleep, and I was left to my own thoughts.
So I was to be a soldier, after all! It seemed the immutable dictum
of fate--of a destiny against which there was no contending; and by
this almost atheistical sophistry (rather than by the pressing
argument of necessity) I endeavoured for a time to stifle regret, and
the stings of a conscience that upbraided me, for deserting my mother
in her old age and my sister in her early youth.
But the die was cast, and thus I strove to find consolation in
deeming myself a fatalist.
I knew that my mother would weep for me--yea, bitterly; and that how
dear my desertion (the whole circumstances of which I might never be
able to explain) cost her, would be known only to God and her own
gentle heart; and this conviction sank like iron into my soul.
Our quiet little cottage--the peaceful village home I might never see
again, came vividly before me. With a swollen heart, and eyes full
of bitter tears, I thought I never loved them all so dearly as on the
night of that day, the most eventful of my life.
I never closed an eye, and when our drum beat before dawn, in the
echoing market-place of Compton Rennel, I started unrefreshed from my
tear-wetted pillow, and prepared to march, with other recruits, for
the head-quarters of the Scots Fusiliers.