"I want you. I can live without you no longer."
The opportunity presented itself in this wise. Though cut off from all
other pleasures of youth, Leonie was, at midsummer, for the short six
weeks' season, allowed to bathe in the sea, attended by the faithful
Valentine. She crossed daily to St Malo on the "_Pont Roulant_"--a
quaint structure that, moved by chains and steam, plies the water on
sand-embedded rails--and there joined in the acquatic gambols of the
merry crowd. With the strange inconsistency of the narrow, her
relatives, who had almost tabooed society, permitted her to indulge her
taste for swimming, a sport in which she excelled. This laxity probably
owed its origin to routine cultivated in the girl's childhood, and
retained--as were all the observances of Madame's distinguished
household--still intact and unchallenged.
At St Malo, as the tide ebbed, all the delightfully _insouciant_ and
cheery French world congregated. The sands near the giant rock that
marks the ideal resting-place of Chateaubriand were dotted with tents--a
perfect army of mushrooms--which served as disrobing shelters for the
bathers. From these emerged a brilliant throng of masqueraders of both
sexes, who tripped to the tide with varying degrees of elegant
assurance. As Leonie's lithe figure, with its natty tunic and cherry
waist-band, slipped from the tent (Valentine for the moment was
arranging the shed raiment) a gamin with bare limbs and furled shrimping
net lurched up against her. There was unusual audacity in the eye of the
youngster, but the disrespect was forgiven when a missive, crunched in
his plump palm, was transferred to hers.
She clasped her hands, drew a long breath of rapturous surprise, and
devoutly whispered:--
"_Que Dieu soit beni!_"
The Catholic and Breton temperament is so finely interwoven that even
this sudden overstepping of family restrictions had to her its pious
side. She could there and then, in effervescent thankfulness, have knelt
to worship all the infinitesimal saintlings of whom her lover had never
heard, but who, with her, were active pioneers to mercy. Besides this,
love, which, when real, touches the religious string in every breast,
had so long played an accompaniment to prayer and worship, that her
first action was almost mechanically devotional. Her second, in
contrast, was crudely mundane. Valentine, complacency beaming from her
triple chins, loomed expansively in the doorway of the tent, so Leonie,
slipping the billet in her mouth, sped for protection to the ocean, the
only haven where she could be free from company and espionage.
She battled against the waves till she neared the protective raft in
deep water where timorous bathers never ventured. Then she hoisted
herself up, took the scrap of paper from its hiding place, and re-read
it, crossing herself devoutly and crying with childish exultation:--
"Oh sea, beloved sea, you have brought him to me at last! Never, never
shall he depart but with Leonie!"
As she declaimed, a man's head appeared above the arch of the waves, and
on the instant they recognised each other.
He sprang to the raft and deposited himself, radiant and dripping, by
her side. They were too far at sea to be minutely observed. The
roisterers on the beach could do no more than discern a couple of
resting forms, a common sight in the bathing season.
"I arrived a week ago, and have been dodging you ever since," he
explained.
"_Mon cheri_," she only said. Love's babyhood learns speech with
difficulty.
"I have searched here in the morning when the soldiers parade--I have
loafed up and down the St Servan Street till I know all the good
people's wardrobes that hang to air--I have sneaked about the forts, and
been nearly 'run in' for a spy. I almost despaired of seeing you, but
now, at last, we are together."
His tone was dramatic with genuine ecstasy. Since their parting life's
fruit for him seemed to have been pared and segmented with a steel
knife--at this moment he felt as one who stands free to eat in a
luscious raining orchard.
Leonie answered him never a word. She was speechless with stupefied
satisfaction. She only laughed, looked down at her dainty sand shoes as
she bobbed them in and out of the sparkling water, then, with a
caressing glance at his drenched head, laughed again.
The English language sounded beautiful indeed, but her happiness found
no sufficiently comprehensive outlet in that scarcely familiar tongue.
"Little one," he said, earnestly, "do you love me enough to be mine, to
take me for now and always?"
She nodded only, but her beautiful blue eyes, borrowing intensity from
the azure sky, seemed to answer and envelop him with an embrace of
adoration.
"You must obey me; you must trust me much, very much," he explained,
seriously, seeing the gaiety of her mood.
"To obey--to trust? Of course! Is not all enclosed in love? Have I not
said, 'I love you?'"
"Enough to leave everyone, to come----"
"How? Valentine?" she cried, with a sudden look of terror; "she
waits----"
"To-day," he admitted, "but to-morrow? You will be here in the same
place?" He leapt up and knelt imploringly on the dancing planks.
"Yes," she whispered.
"And from that hour you will give yourself to me?" he insisted.
"To you I gave myself a year ago," she said, with solemnity, her candid
Breton eyes beaming like a bluer heaven upon him.
He moved uneasily.
"You will not regret?" he urged, in some anxiety.
"Shall I regret that there is a God? that when we love He speaks with
us?"
He pressed her hands and kissed them. Her faith was vastly simple, yet
vastly complete.
That night he wandered about the restricted area of St Malo long after
the Curfew--La Noyette, as it is termed--had sounded and the private
dwellings were closed. He was distraught with misgivings. Was he a
latent blackguard? he asked himself, or had he yet the courage to
withdraw, to leave this innocent girl buried in her dungeon,
inconsolable and doubting his fidelity?
No, he had not the courage. Fate held out its magnet--he must go whither
it should lead. He was not an apostle--merely a man, an atom in the
fortuitous system to be swept where destiny should decide. Need he, an
artist, be more chivalrous--he put it baldly--more conventional and
self-abnegating than other men? Must he, when the delicious moment of
love's ripening had arrived, forbear to pluck, to eat? As he had loved
this Breton girl a year ago he loved her, despite their severance,
to-day. Nay, more, for in this year had he not flung himself headlong
into the orgies of his Bohemian life to strangle recollection, and had
he not been haunted by memory's unresting ghost, the more exquisite, the
more endearing for its intangible, ineffaceable outlines? He recalled
some verses of homage to the city he had encountered in an old St Malo
record:--
"Quiconque t'a connue aime ton souvenir
Et vers toi, tot ou tard, desire revenir."
He had come back to the "Souvenir" and realised how the character of
this _Ville d'elite_ so "_douce et pieuse_," so grandly sombre, so
exquisitely poetic and noble, was expressed and summed up in her, his
queenly, gracious Leonie. He decided finally that, come what might, she
should be won!
The next day he was seated on the raft full half an hour before she
appeared. In the lap of the waves he espied a purple-suited nymph,
enwound with a sash of Roman red, extending white arms that glistened
like newly chiselled marble in the green spray. Her pretty lips laughed
as she swam towards him, the sole atom in an immensity of chrysoprase.
That day the usual crowd on the shore was thinned; a market and fair of
some kind at St Servan had lured visitors and St Malouians to the other
side of the Pont Roulant. The beach was comparatively deserted, and even
the boatman who was deputed to row about the bathing course for purposes
of rescue, was, with his craft, apparently off duty.
"How well you swim," said her lover, admiringly, as he greeted the young
girl and noted enviously the drippings from her disfiguring cap that
were privileged to alight upon her dimpled cheeks. He was tempted to put
an arm round the pretty panting figure, but resisted.
"It is my one _passe temps_. I have swam half to Cezambre and back," she
exclaimed proudly, indicating, by a glance over her shoulder, an island
that reared its rocks some two miles distant.
He flushed slightly.
"It is there that I want you to swim--now, when you have rested."
"Too far," she sighed; "we could never get back."
"We should never come back," he announced with determination.
"Valentine? She will think I drown."
"She would prefer to bury you at La Chaumais?"
Leonie laughed.
"Are you ready?" he said, arresting further objections and crushing a
word of endearment that rose to his lips. To be successful he must be
matter-of-fact. Everything now depended on promptness and a cool head.
He pulled a knotted string and lifted from the water a cork belt.
"You must run no risk of fatigue," he said, fitting it to her fragile
form. "Now, let us start. Valentine will soon be on the _qui vive_."
Without demur she accepted his hand and leapt with him from the far side
of the raft.
The sea stretched a sheet of silver under a sky of gauzy opal, shot with
flame from the dozing sun; wind and tide were in their favour. Before
long they had passed from the sight of the shore to the shade of the
giant rock, whose railed summit, dedicated to Chateaubriand, seems to
commune with and command the elements. Cezambre in the distance was as
yet merely an apparent triangle of spikes jutting from mid ocean, but
towards it they plied their way valiantly, two moving human dots, on the
breast of the vast abyss. Once she laughed uproariously to relieve her
happiness, but he checked her.
"We must reserve our forces, my darling, every breath in us. Valentine
will give the alarm directly. She will wait and wait, and then there
will be a hue and cry. It will be a matter of life and death. Do you
understand?"
In the earnestness of his face she read for the first time all that this
adventurous swim would mean for them both.
"If they come," she panted, "you will not leave me, you will not give me
back to them?"
His jaws clenched hard.
"Never!" he vowed. "We will go under first!"
He trod the water for a moment while he scanned the expanse behind them.
"Go on," he begged of her; "I will catch you up: spare yourself as much
as you can."
His precaution was needless; nothing was to be seen on the still surface
of the sea, and, as the rock now screened the shore, it was impossible
to guess what might be taking place there. Presently he gained on her.
"Safe so far," he said. "Don't speak; float a little."
He caught the side of the life-belt she wore and swam out, drawing her
in the direction of the island. Some sailing boats fluttered across the
horizon, but their route lay in an opposite direction to that of the
swimmers, who had now left the rocks and were well in the open.
Gradually the St Malo coast grew more indistinct, and by degrees in
front of them the spikes that had represented Cezambre developed into
rocks. Then Leonie assembled her flagging forces and struck out with
renewed zest. The sun was going down, and a cool breeze came up behind
them and seemed to give them impetus and freshened courage. Before
twilight they had safely piloted themselves to shore.
As they rose from the depths he flung his arms round her with a sense of
ecstatic relief.
"Now, dearest, we must brave it out; go to the coastguard's hut,
and"--he pointed to an oilskin satchel which he had worn across his
shoulders--"buy him."
Leonie cast on her lover a glance of awe and pride and worship. He
seemed to be God and fairy tale miraculously combined. She believed
herself to be treading Elysium as they took their way to the humble
stone cabin occupied by the coastguard and his son, the only inhabitants
of the island. Her young brain reeled with the intoxication of freedom.
How much rosier than any she had before seen were the sea-pinks that
flowered their way; how surprisingly azure the common bluebells that
nodded and waved and seemed, as they passed, to be ringing chimes to
celebrate her happiness. And even the potatoes that grew in the little
garden plot where this coastguard Crusoe toiled, had they not a world of
wonder in their blossoms, in their golden eyes, which watched and
watched and glowed, as she believed, before the triumphant coming of
their Love?
A rude hobbledehoy of the St Malo peasant class opened the hut door and
stared. Then he said something in his opaque _patois_ which only Leonie
could elucidate. She had often imitated the vulgar of her race from
sheer _plaisanterie_.
She replied in the same key, and, seeing that the youth comprehended,
the artist prompted a duologue.
"He says," Leonie began by explaining, "the coastguard is ill, he cannot
leave him to go ashore, and does not know what to do. He refuses to take
us back in his boat."
"He is under the delusion we want to go back? Good! Give him money and
say we will stop here and attend his sick man."
This explanation ensured their entry. The boy was evidently relieved of
a burden. The hut was composed merely of two rooms, in one of which a
weather-beaten old man was evidently bedridden from pain. He looked
askance at the two bathers, but at the same time his son put a coin into
the sufferer's hand. The youth, with the acumen of his kind, understood
the relative value of eloquence and action.
"Clothes--food," Leonie translated at her lover's request.
The boy shook his head. Then his eyes fell on the rough suit belonging
to his father which was slung across the end of the bed.
"That might do for me," the artist cogitated, with wrinkled brow, "but
for you?" He looked seriously at his sweetheart. The boy's eyes followed
his glance and read it. The sick man turned in his bed, groaned, and
wondered when these troublesome people were going away.
Leonie rubbed a gentle hand on the invalid's shoulder; it was presumably
the seat of the worst pain. He suffered rheumatism in its most acute
form, so the coastguard explained between his throes. He was afraid to
seek help from the land, lest his condition should be known and he be
removed from his post. Their silence was implored with tears and
prayers--he would give them food and shelter if they would keep his
secret. They promised assuringly.
Meanwhile the lad had disappeared into the inner room--it suggested a
combined kitchen and workshop--and came back dangling from his arm some
fragmentary portions of his wardrobe, which he displayed with pride.
"If madame would condescend?" he hinted.
At the word "madame" Leonie blushed delightedly.
He led the way into the kitchen, and deposited the dry clothes on a
chair.
Ralph remained by the sick man, rubbing the afflicted limb, and
expressing himself in the vilest French he knew in hope to imitate the
local jargon.
He spoke sufficiently to crave bread and drink, and to learn that these
were only obtained when fetched from the land in the island boat. His
son, the coastguard said, was seldom allowed to go ashore, lest he
should commit himself and divulge the fact that illness kept his sire
from duty. Fortunately the boat had been provisioned that morning, and
there was food for several days.
During the conversation the artist adjusted the coastguard's overcoat
and trousers, which latter were three inches too short for his lengthy
British limbs.
Presently a transformed Leonie emerged from the inner chamber. "An ideal
fisher boy," the painter thought, as his enraptured eye travelled up and
down the coarse blue clothing. When it reached some loose locks of her
shining hair he became puzzled. She, divining his thought, felt in the
pocket of her newly-acquired coat, and drew forth a maze of gold, soft
as fleece of raw silk fresh from the cocoon, and gave it him.
He began to scold at the sacrifice.
"It is a web to entangle your love for always," she murmured, with
cooing lips, which seemed, there and then, to suck the heart out of him.
He would fain have swept the coastguard and his son from the hut, but
the exuberant _patois_ of "madame," the more exuberant by reason of her
characteristic disguise, broke out, demanding of the lad refreshment,
and illustrating her request with significant pantomime. The childish
joy of this noble Breton damsel as she devoured the rude meal in company
with their quaint hosts delighted him, and the charming _abandon_ with
which she threw herself into the comedy of the situation brought heat to
his already tingling blood.
Suddenly she grew grave.
"I was so hungry I forgot to ask a blessing," whereupon the buoyant
little creature uprose from her seat and offered a prayer. The short
Latin sentence was familiar to Ralph's ear; it was common to the whole
Catholic Church; but now it had a parenthesis--a parenthesis during
which her loving eyes looked first to his, then heavenward--a
parenthesis of praise and thanksgiving _for him_.
He bent his head to hide the flush that overspread his cheeks, and, for
an instant, he buried his face in his hands.
When the meal was over, Leonie ran into the potato garden. She gathered
some loose weeds of which he did not know the name, picking here and
there carefully that all of them should be of the right sort.
"I could not go to sleep and leave the old man to his pains," she said.
"Of these"--she pointed to the herbs--"the poor people make poultices
when they suffer."
He took the bundles from her hands and kissed her fingers. "You shall
sleep, dearest, and I will devote myself to the poor fellow. We have
reason to be very grateful to him."
"Very well, doctor," she laughed. "You must be careful to stew the
leaves very soft."
Then she walked in and commanded the boy to get grass in a bag for a
pillow, declaring merrily that some fishing nets and canvas in the
kitchen would make her a couch fit for a queen.
The poultices certainly soothed, though they did not cure, the sufferer.
This fact Ralph painfully discovered during the long hours of the night.
His limbs were weary, and though the floor at the foot of the
coastguard's bed was hard, he yearned heartily for rest. But the poor
invalid, by whose side the son snored obdurately, hourly implored
relief. Faithful to his word, the nurse, uprose at intervals and put
fresh leaves in the stewpan, warming them on a rustic stove till soft
enough for use. This lasted till day dawn. Then the lad went forth
a-shrimping, and Ralph decided to refresh himself with a plunge in the
sea. Washing utensils, he had discovered, were unknown in Cezambre.
He was speeding down the garden in bathing suit when he caught a glimpse
of his purple dolphin riding the waves.
"I squeezed myself out of the window so as not to wake you," she
spluttered, through the surf. "I thought, _mon cheri_, you would repose
for ever."
"The old man is very thankful to you for your prescription." He avoided
the confession of his night's unrest. "We must gather some more of those
herbs to-day."
"Perhaps, but not till evening. You don't know that we must hide. There
may come strangers for trips on boats from St Servan, and one is never
sure."
"Your people?"
"Oh no; they would do nothing so _roturier_--English and Americans----"
"They would not know us; you forget what a good gamin my noble lady
makes."
"I did forget," she chuckled. "I will dig potatoes, and you may take the
boy to the other side of the island. The strangers only go there to
stare one moment at the rocks and cry 'Oh!'"
When at midday the trippers landed at Cezambre, they saw no one but an
urchin bent double over a spade. His face was covered with mud, some of
which was also spattered on the floss silk of his hair.
A tourist addressed him, and received a reply in broad _patois_ which he
could not understand.
The youth was very voluble, despite the irresponsiveness of the
audience; he waved his hand indicating the beauties of the island with
an air of ownership. Now and then he punctuated his speech by rubbing
his fustian arm across his nose in true plebeian fashion. The tourists
were delighted, and, before departing, dropped a silver coin into his
grimy but exquisitely shaped palm.
When Ralph returned she met him, dancing and rubbing the mud from her
cheeks.
"See," she said, tossing the coin in the air, "this is the first wedding
present we have had. I will cut Cezambre upon it and wear it for ever.
But first you will come with me."
She took his hand and led the way to a curious cave carved in the rocks,
in the centre of which was a cross. The walls were frescoed with common
shells, the offerings, she explained, of poor pilgrims who had been
worshippers at this primitive shrine.
With unconscious grace she prostrated herself in prayer.
He watched her in silence, his artist eye greedily tracing the
picturesque in every line of this innocent devotion, though his panting
heart longed to intrude on the sanctity of her worship. Presently she
lifted her hand to his and drew him to his knees by her side.
Softly, like the sonorous gong from some grand cathedral belfry, she
commenced to recite or chant in Latin.
"Speak with me," she whispered, repeating the melodious words with an
accent of reverential appreciation.
He did as she bade. The fervour of her devotion communicated itself to
him, he followed word for word to the end. The burthen, though not the
absolute meaning of the sentences, inspired him--it was the ceremony of
marriage they quoted, it was God's blessing they mutually invoked.
* * * * *
When they had returned to the potato garden, and were plucking herbs for
the poultices he had promised to renew during his midnight vigils, he
suddenly remarked:--
"We must leave here for the English coast as soon as we can get a
fishing smack to take us along."
"Leave here?" she uttered in dismay. "I would remain for ever."
He gave a short gasp, clutched her hands, and looked straight into the
transparent blue depths of her eyes. Then he moved away a step or two
and shook his head.
"It is inevitable; we must go to England--give ourselves over to law and
parson."
"Here it is better," she cooed; "you are king and I am priest." But he
dissented.
"I never had much respect for Church or State. I appreciate them as one
appreciates steel to sharpen one's blade against."
She did not understand. Only the simplest English formed her vocabulary,
but she saw he disagreed with her.
"Here we are everything," she said; "we make laws straight from God for
ourselves."
He shrugged his shoulders and sighed. "Those, I find, are the toughest
laws of all! Come, darling, let us ask the boy yonder about the fishing
boats."
They were informed that one might possibly pass on the following night.
He borrowed from the youth a piece of hard chalk that acted in lieu of
pencil, and begged Leonie to write with it on some rough paper which had
served to wrap stores from the land.
"Tell your mother that we have decided, after three days on this island,
to leave for Brighton, on the British coast, there to marry. A year ago
we asked her blessing on our love, and she refused it; we pray that she
will now be more lenient."
"No good," murmured Leonie, translating, however, what he had dictated.
Below, he scribbled the address of an hotel in England, where a reply
might meet them.
"She is sure," he said, folding the note, "to call me a blackguard, and
as certain, I hope, to consent."
"My best and dearest," cried the girl in prospective contradiction of
anything that might be pronounced against him.
Twenty-four hours later, when the fishing smack alluded to hove in
sight, the missive was handed to the coastguard's son. He was ordered to
take it inland on the morrow, and deliver it without fail, at "La
Chaumais."
"But supposing my brother should not write? Supposing he should come?"
"That is what I hope. Le Sieur will support the dignity of the De
Quesnes--he will engage with the law and leave us to engage with only
love."
So the next evening they put out to sea through the gossamer scarves of
moving twilight--the man in his coastguard kit gay to frivolity, the
girl in fisher disguise, meditative, half tearful. She breathed not a
word while her straining eyes could clutch the outline of the land from
the embrace of night; but when all was wrapped in gloom she lifted her
gaze to the star-spangled heavens, and murmured with folded hands,
"_Cher Royaume de Cezambre, adieu!_"
Trooper Jones of the Light Brigade.
"To get myself in courage--crush out fears;
To strive with fate for something more than gold."
A year or two ago I received an envelope containing a lock of flame-red
hair wrapped in a soiled linen rag. By this token I knew that old
Sergeant Kemp--the name is a pseudonym, for reasons which will be
seen--Sergeant Kemp, formerly of the Light Brigade, was dead. This
knowledge unseals my lips, and permits me to divulge an extraordinary
episode of the charge of Balaclava which was related to me by the
veteran, and which, as far as I can judge, has entirely escaped the
research of the romanticist and historian.
My original intention in going to see the old hero was to interview him
and learn if he could throw any new light on the tragic and immemorial
events of '54-5-6, through which, with the exception of a slight wound
in the wrist, he had passed unscathed.
I propitiated him with gifts of tobacco, and, having found the "open
sesame" to the cave of his reminiscences, visited him often. My object
was to filch, surreptitiously as it were, the treasures I coveted,
before their valuable crudity could suffer the unconscious adulteration
to which such goods are liable at the hands of the professional
story-monger. But I found, when the strings of his tongue were unloosed,
he had very little more to relate about the events of the campaign than
is already recorded. In fact, like many an actor in the drama of life,
he really knew less about the general _mise-en-scene_ than I, who had
only reviewed it through the lorgnon of Tennyson and other contemporary
writers. Seeing, however, that a shade of disappointment was cast by the
fogginess of his disclosures, the old fellow one day abruptly asked if I
could keep a secret were he to tell it me. I vowed my complete
trustworthiness, but at the same time remonstrated that confidences so
hampered would be of absolutely no use to the work I had on hand. He
rose laboriously from his chair--lumbago had almost crippled him--and
produced from a tin box a soiled rag containing the curl of red hair
which is now in my possession.
"This 'air," he explained in mumbling tones, "was cut off the 'ead of
Trooper Jones of ours--in times of war one 'asn't much truck with the
barber," he parenthesised. "We called 'im 'Carrots,' as bein' most
convenient and discriptive like. And that there bit of shirt belonged to
my pal Jenkins, as good a chap as ever wore shako. It's the 'istory of
'em both as I've 'alf a mind to tell you, but you must be mum as old
bones about it--at all events till this 'ere bloke's a-carried out feet
foremost."
"And then?" I said, with unbecoming eagerness.
"Then you can jest do what ye darn please; the 'ole three of us 'll be
orf dooty together."
So he related to me in a fragmentary manner, halting now and again and
blowing clouds from his pipe as if to assist his ruminations, the
strange history of Trooper Jones, almost word for word as I have set it
down. He began:--
"It was in May that we got orders to embark.... I can remember turning
out at four in the mornin' to march to the dockyard, and 'ow the green
lanes was all a-sproutin' and a-shinin', and 'ow the sky was that pink
and streaky, for all the world like a prime rasher. But that's neither
'ere nor there.... We 'ad been billeted in the villages nigh Portsmouth
for several days, and my comrade, James Jenkins, and I 'ad been
quartered at an inn kept by Jones' father and 'is sister--a strappin'
girl, and as like her brother as one bullet's like another. They was
twins, them two--with top-knots the colour o' carrots, mouths as wide as
oyster-shells, allus grinnin', and a power of freckles that made their
faces as yeller as speckled eggs. But Jenny Jones was a stunner, she
was; she served at the bar, and gave the boys as good as they gave--'ot
sauce for the cheeky and a clout o' the 'ead if need be when mi lady's
blood was up. Woman-like, she was that contrary, wi' a tongue as sharp
as a razor for some o' us, and all butter and honey and eyes like a
sucking-calf whenever Jenkins so much as showed 'is nose. And 'e, 'e was
that sweet on 'er as though she'd been a Wenus cast in sugar."
The old fellow blew a mighty whiff from his pipe, a whiff that was akin
to a sigh, and for a few moments he became apparently fogged by the
retrospective haze that surrounded him. He seemed disinclined to relate
more, but as I remained silent he presently resumed:--
"I won't tell you of all the 'arrowin' sights of that there mornin', the
women--mothers and wives and sweethearts--a-snivellin' and a-sobbin',
the men lookin' all awry, as though they'd swallered a chemist shop and
couldn't get the taste out o' their mouths. All this wi' shoutin' of
orders, and noise of the 'orses bein' slung up the ship's side and let
down the main 'atchway into the 'old, and the playin' of the band, and
the cheerin' of the crowd in the dockyard, and the crews in the 'arbour,
and the youngsters on the _Victory_--old fellers they must be
now--a-roarin' fit to split 'emselves from the yards and riggin' so long
as we 'ad ears to 'ear.
"I, bein' som'at of a bachelor by instink, 'ad no gal to wish me
God-speed; but Jenkins, poor chap, was in the same boat. Jenny Jones 'ad
not put 'erself about to see 'im nor 'er brother orf, and as they stood
alongside one another looking that solemn and glum, I couldn't 'elp
thinkin' o' the 'eartlessness of wenches in general and that there in
pertikilar.
"But soon I thought no more on the subjec', for there was other things
to mind. There was dinner, and givin' out of sea kit and gettin' our
ration of grog--three parts water it was to one o' rum then, but it grew
to 'alf a gill and a gill a day later on."
"About Jenkins?" I reminded, seeing that his brain reeled with the
reminiscence of bygone potations.
"Oh, I didn't see 'im at that time. We went below to the stable; our
beasts was stood wi' heels to the ship's sides and their sorry 'eads
a-facin' of each other. They was awful bad, and mighty funky of the
lurchin's of the ship. I found Jones down there--'e was a-bathin' of 'is
'orse's nose with water and vinegar, and a-cheerin' of 'im up to eat,
which he wouldn't do for all the coaxin'. 'Carrots' spent all 'is spare
time at that there game, givin' short answers and cursin' freely now and
agin. But 'e did 'is work right enough--cleaned stalls, polished and
burnished 'is saddle and accoutrements like the best of us--though
whenever I looked at 'im there was some'at shifty in his eye and an odd
turn o' the 'ead, as though 'e'd been a-sneakin' rum, or a-doin'
somethin' as was contrary to regilations. And one day he turns on me
savage like:--
"'What the ---- are you lookin' at me for? Can't you mind your own
bloomin' business,' sez 'e. So I ups and sez what came to me all of a
flash:--
"'Yer no more Ben Jones than I be, and what's more----'
"Before I gets out another word 'e grips 'old of my hands and looks as
though 'e was a-goin' down on 'is bended knees afore me.
"'For Gord's sake, Bill, don't blow on me. I've been a-dodgin' of you so
careful, and you was the only one I was a-feared on. I've allus been
civil to 'e, Bill--I'll give 'e my rations of grog, Bill--I'll do
anythin' for ye so long as yer leaves me alone.'
"All this came a-rushin' from 'is mouth like a water-shoot in summer
that 'as been froze for 'arf the year. Then I slaps my knee and bursts
into a roar.
"'Good Gord, Jenny,' sez I, 'this 'ere is a go! It's a desp'rate game
you're a-playin' of.'
"'D'ye think,' she sez, 'I'd play it if I weren't desp'rate, too? 'Ere
was Jim and I just married, and I not on the "strength" and 'e a-goin'
sails set for the grave. Oh! I seed it, sure as I stands 'ere, and I sez
to mysel', wot's the fun of bein' twin with Ben if can't go like 'im,
an' fight shoulder to shoulder with my Jim? Wot's the good of this 'ere
life without 'im, a-fillin' and a-swillin' and nothin' more?--for that's
all's left for wummin when their 'earts is cut in two.'
"I put up my 'and, for there was someone a-comin', and we went on
a-cleanin' of the stalls; but d'rectly I was able I stalked Trooper
Jones and got the rest o' the 'istory out o' 'im. Course, I asks after
Ben, our real 'Carrots.' And she larfs with 'er mouth a-gape and 'er
white strong teeth a-shinin'.
"'Ben?' she sez, 'O, 'e was that sick 'e couldn't say me nay; he was
jist rolled up in bed like a worm, and fit to stay there a week or two.
Nothing pisonous, mind you; but all's fair in love or war, and this 'ere
game is both. So I got 'is kit and jist marched along at daybreak wi'
the lot of you. You should 'a' seed Jim's face when 'e recognises me. He
didn't guess whether 'e was glad nor glum, so he cussed like a good 'un,
and that did dooty either way.'
"Young Jenny larfed till the tears came a-rollin' down 'er uniform.
"'Yer brother's in for a nasty business," sez I.
"'Not a bit of it. I've settled it. 'E'll dye 'is carrots and imigrate.
Father'll see to 'im; 'e never 'ad the constitootion as was given to
compensate me for being a----'
"'Hold,' sez I, 'the timbers 'ave ears. I am a-goin' to forget as
there's any amphibus animals 'ereabouts; there's only troopers and
'osses as I knows of.'
"'Gord bless you, Bill! None of the other chaps 'ave twigged, and I've
scarce throwed a word at Jim since we got afloat. But I looked at 'im
and 'e at me, and folks with one 'eart between 'em don't need for
words.'"
Here the narrator put a square thumb over the brim of his pipe and
pressed the weed almost tenderly.
"In time," he went on, "I got quite proud o' young Jones, 'e was as
smart a dragoon as any, an 'orsemaster every inch of 'im. Why, the way
'ed whisper into the ear of them beasts would make 'em meek were they
contrary ever so....
"It took us over fifty days a-journeyin' past Malta and Constantinople
and the Black Sea. I was landed fust with one or two others to report
oursel's to Gen'ral the Earl of Lucan, who was a-commandin' of the
Cavalry Division. Jones and Jenkins and the rest of our fellers came
over fully accoutred in 'orse-boats, each at the 'ead of 'is charger. We
soon 'ad work enough, I can tell you, a tent pitchin' and gettin'
rations and makin' oursel's understood. The town was choke full o'
ruffians, Turks, Jews, Armenians, Greeks, all a-jawing in diff'rent
tongues and a quarrellin' like magpies over a bit of offal. 'Ere Jones
was full o' spirits, a-larfin' and a-swearin' with the best of us. 'E
'ad a way about 'im as licked the sourest grumbler into shape. And the
gals, such as they was, fancied 'is jovial mug and made eyes at 'im. It
was a rum sight to watch the poor things a-wastin' ammunishun on one of
their own sex. I mind me of a wivandeer of the Chasseurs D'Afrique, a
smart young lass in red trousers and a dark tunic, with 'er plumed 'at
all cockeye on 'er head, and 'er legs astride the saddle--she was quite
took up with Jones. And afterwards the Bulgarian gals was nuts on 'im,
too. Jones would give us real pantomimes a-snatchin' o' kisses from one
or another of 'em when they came to fill their wessels at the well.
"'E was good at work or play was 'Carrots.' Right well 'e came out of it
when we 'ad to turn our 'ands to odd jobs, such as mowin' and reapin'
and cookin', cos 'is fingers weren't thumbs like ours war. And at
skirmishin' and outpost drill, and a-chargin' in line and by squadrons,
he was real smart too; 'e took to them manoeuvres as a duck takes to
water, with niver a growl nor a grumble, 'owever 'ard the work.
"But a bad day it was for 'im when the cholera broke up our camp at
Devno; it takes the strong 'uns fust, and then swoops down
promiscus-like. Poor Jenkins got bad just as we was a-tired of buryin'
an' 'earin' nothin' but the 'Dead March,' which made the sick all of a
tremble to know which would be the next to be took. 'E was down with it
the wery day as we got orders to start for the Crimea. We was to march
the next mornin' for Varna, and most of the night was spent in packin'
up.
"Jones, 'e comes to me like one stark mad, beatin' of 'is breast and
a-cursin' at the back o' 'is teeth.
"'Jim's that bad,' says 'e, 'they don' know as whether there's any 'ope
for 'im.'
"'They're preparin' of arabas to carry the sick,' sez I, to console 'im.
"'Gord, Gord,' 'e sez, 'that's jest it. All the sick as might get well
will go, and the others--they'll be left be'ind afore the breath's out
of 'em. I 'eard someone a-sayin' there was no use in movin' of 'em as
was as good as dead.'
"And sure enough next mornin' I larnt that Jones was right. Revelly
sounded at three, and by six every man was on parade. Arabas, drawn by
bufferloes, was packed wi' sick, the dyin' was left in 'ospital with
orderleys and a sawbones to keep 'em company. They must ha' 'eard us
marchin', marchin' away--them poor, animated corpses, with jest the
regilation number o' gasps between 'em and eternity--but most on us was
too busy to think on abstrac' things at sich a time."
"How about Jenkins?" I asked, seeing that my friend's mind had gone
wool-gathering over the whole panorama of the war.
"Oh, 'e was safe enough; 'e took a turn for the better at the last
moment, and they moved 'im into the arabas along with the rest, but
Jones looked 'iself badly enough. 'E comes to me the nex' night and
brings this 'ere lock of 'air in 'is 'and.
"'If I'm took,' sez 'e, 'give it to Jim and tell 'im to wear it on 'is
'eart for the love of "Carrots" as was.'
"I put the 'air in my 'aversack careless-like, and gave 'im a drink o'
rum neat, which was better nor talk. It kippers the cholera out o' one
fine.
"'The likes of you and me is always spared,' sez I, a-larfin'; 'rubbish
ain't marketable aloft.'
"And spared 'e was, and would 'ave been to this day, along with this
'ere lumber, but for 'is cussed fool'ardiness....
"Things was lively for a bit afore and after the victory o' the Alma,
the pertikilars of which I have reported to you. I scarce clapped eyes
on Jones or Jenkins, but they was engaged in skirmishin' along with the
rest of us.
"On the day that Captain Nolan came a-gallopin' in with that there
momentous paper, Jones sez to me, 'There's somethin' up,' and we saw
Lord Lucan and Lord Cardigan a-lookin' at them guns. The enemy had
ranged 'em across the walley about a mile and a-'arf orf, with a field
batt'ry on the 'ill on our left front, and another between the redoubts
and the walley on our right. Captain Nolan was a-pointin', and the
generals was a-confabulatin'. Then we was told to mount and move orf at
a trot. The first thing that 'appens was poor Captain Nolan a-gettin'
shot almost afore we broke into a gallop. 'E was struck by a bit o'
shell, and d'rectly after the guns began a-playin' on us all, and the
air was 'eavy with groans and curses and screams of men and 'orses
a-fallin' to right and left like nine-pins. Jenkins and Jones was with
me on the right of the line, Jenkins as blue as a corpse, and Jones
flushed and savage-like, avoidin' as best 'e could the 'orses without
riders as still kept pace with us, and the press of men and beasts
a-jostlin' to close to the centre. We couldn't see where we was a-goin'
cos o' the power 'o smoke, nor 'ear 'cos o' the boomin' and bustin' and
bumpin' round the 'ill-side. Then bang I goes. A shell 'ad caught my
poor 'orse in the shoulder, and over 'e rolls and I under 'im,
fortunately covered from the explodin' pieces as would 'ave settled me
'ad they 'ave reached me. Jest as I was beginnin' to wonder whether I
was really breathin', over my 'ead comes the second line a-gallopin' for
all they was worth. 'Twas a near squeak that, and I was mighty 'mazed to
find that never a 'oof 'ad come nigh so much as a finger o' me. At last
I got clear of my poor beast--'e was only a dead 'ulk, all 'is fore
quarters bein' blown away--and tried to stand. It was precious
difficult, an' as I was limpin' in an 'op-and-go fashun, I chanced on
Jenkins who 'ad likewise been bowled over, an' was lyin' under 'is 'orse
in a pool o' blood. Jones was a-kneelin' by 'is side with 'is left arm
clean ripped up. I suspects a splinter from the same shell as caught
Jenkins 'ad struck 'im.
"''Elp me to draw 'im out,' sez 'Carrots,' with never a quiver o' the
eye.
"I lent a 'and, and Jones with 'is only arm was a-strugglin' to move
'im, but we soon saw we was only causin' of the poor chap unnecessary
aginy.
"'It's all up wi' me,' sez Jenkins in a failin' voice. 'Clear out sharp,
they're a-firm' from the flank o' the batt'ry at them as is dismounted.'
"'Take care of Jenny,' sez 'e with 'is last breath, and wrings my 'and.
"Then Jones begins a-kneelin' alongside of 'im a-callin' 'im by every
sweet name as could be thought on. Oh! it was a pitiful sight to see a
big dragoon a-huggin' of another, a-kissin' of 'is lips and 'is 'ands,
and 'im stone dead, a-smilin' up at the sky.
"This 'ere 'appened in a minite like, for d'rectly afterwards I sees
Jones leap up and catch a 'orse wot 'ad lost 'is rider and mount 'im. 'E
just looks once at 'is poor comrade, and out at the 'ills and the guns
a-vomitin' smoke. Then 'e starts off--not a-ridin' like woman, nor man,
nor 'ero, but a-gallopin' like the wery Devil 'isself, straight into the
jaws of 'ell."
* * * * *
There was a pause, during which the old trooper knocked out the ashes of
his pipe against the arm of his chair.
"That was the last wot I sees of 'Carrots,'" he said, with a dry smile.
The "Celibate" Club (Dialogue).
_Characters._
Miss HAGAR HUNCH, _President;_ Miss DORA DARLISH, _Secretary_;
Mrs EGERTON and Mrs CLARE GRAHAM, _Visitors_; and the
"CELIBATES," eight in number.