L’Estrange was quite a success in his new character as a Scarlet
Hussar. At first, it is true, he incurred suspicion. When, at his
first essay in the riding-school, he rode with “stirrups up,” as
if he were “demi-corporate with the brave beast”; and when, at his
first dismounted drill, he cut the sword exercise with more grace
and precision than did the old ranker adjutant himself, his troop
sergeant-major promptly set him down as a deserter. That conviction
L’Estrange summarily dispelled by confidentially informing the honest
old non-com., with the little compliment of a five-pound note, that he
had been an officer in the Bengal Cavalry who had come to grief, and
that he had enlisted in an assumed name with intent to work up for a
commission. Of course the troop sergeant-major divulged this confidence
to the regimental, the regimental told it to the adjutant, and soon
every officer in the regiment knew it, and L’Estrange’s lines fell in
pleasant places. Grim old Sabretasche, the chief, dropped him a bluffly
curt word of encouragement. Lord Ebor, the captain of his troop, his
courteous and kindly nature moving him, spoke to him as an equal, and
expressed the hope that before long he might see him “in the blue
coat.” In four months from the day of his enlistment L’Estrange was
full corporal; in four months more he was a lance-sergeant.
While still a private, by taking his comrades separately, and talking
cautiously but suggestively, he had won over quite a large number of
the young soldiers of the regiment. When the three stripes were on
his arm, and he had become a member of the sergeants’ mess, it was
with great finesse and adroitness that he made his advances among
the non-commissioned officers with whom he now lived. With the grand
staunch class of old long-service non-commissioned officers L’Estrange
would have utterly failed to make way, and would either have been
jeered down or reported to superior authority. Of this type, however,
there remained in the Scarlet Hussars only two or three veterans,
who were all married men, and therefore were not frequenters of the
sergeants’ mess. The majority of the non-commissioned officers were
flashy young short-service men, “jumped-up non-coms.” in soldier
phrase, dissipated, hungry for more means wherewithal to pursue
dissipation, discontented and unconscientious. Most of them lent a
more or less greedy ear to the subtle poison covertly instilled by
L’Estrange, and the result of his machinations was that before he had
been in the regiment a twelve-month the Scarlet Hussars, spite of their
fine old reputation for every soldierly virtue, were fast ripening for
mischief.
In sundry short conversations, when Sergeant L’Estrange took the
order-book daily to his captain’s quarters, and after Lord Ebor had
read the details of regimental work for the morrow, the former, who
had read his officer like a book, from time to time dropped mildly
Socialistic seed into his mind, which fell in not unfavourable soil.
Meanwhile Sergeant L’Estrange was indefatigable in his efforts to
proselytise among the soldiery of the London garrison outside his
own regiment. In this work he had the advantage that his troop had
been moved up from Hounslow to Kensington. In the Scarlet Hussars the
wearing of “plain clothes”--_i.e._ civilian attire--by the sergeants
was winked at, and L’Estrange could thus when occasion required go
about the town and visit places unnoticed, where his uniform might have
attracted attention. He met with no success in his attempts to sap the
loyalty of the Household Cavalry. Because of his winning address, his
fine voice in a song, and his bright talk, he had been made free of
the non-commissioned officers’ mess of the “Blues” on his first visit
to Regent’s Park Barracks, and he had made himself agreeable with
similar result among the Corporals of Horse of the 1st Life Guards in
Knightsbridge. But his particular object made no way either in Regent’s
Park or in Hyde Park. Because Corporal of Horse Jack Vanhomrigh of
the “Blues” was a pariah of society, had been detected and denounced
as a card-sharper, had tossed in the smoking-room of a club with a
brother reprobate for the possession of a notorious woman whom he had
married and then lived on till the poor wretch died of consumption,
L’Estrange regarded that scion of a noble family as a person likely to
listen to his overtures. He reckoned without his host. Vanhomrigh was
on his promotion; he had washed and was now comparatively clean; a few
more months of straight conduct would see him on his way to a cattle
ranche in Alberta. He had been a blackguard, but he was a Briton. So
in perfectly outspoken terms he denounced the Scarlet Hussar to the
assembled mess, and told L’Estrange in the frankest manner that he
ought to be hanged because shooting was too good for him. The mess
president warned L’Estrange against ever showing his face in that
company again, and the orderly Corporal of Horse, enjoined by the old
Regimental Corporal-Major, escorted him silently to the gate, saw him
outside, and then “put his name on the gate”--a measure effectually
precluding his readmission into Regent’s Park Barracks. L’Estrange
fared no better with the non-commissioned officers of the regiment
quartered at Knightsbridge, which barracks he no more attempted to
enter after the severe corporal chastisement inflicted on him by a
stalwart Corporal of Horse, whom he had approached, learning that he
was in financial difficulties, with seditious proposals pointed by
the offer of a ten-pound note. He fared no whit better with the tall
troopers of either regiment. In vain did he frequent the public-houses
of Knightsbridge and Cumberland Market. The strapping dalesmen were
willing enough to drink with him at his expense, while he led the
jovial chorus and told tales of foreign travel. But L’Estrange had to
rein back sharply on the curb when blunt old Trooper Escrick of Dent,
his face gnarled like the scarped brow of Ingleborough, broke in on
a pretty little outline he was venturing to sketch of the good times
Socialism offered to the soldier. “Mon,” quoth honest Escrick, “thou
mun be a dom fuil, if nobbut warse. Wi’ your bloody community o’ goods,
as thou call’st it, what would happen my feyther, t’oud statesman?
Gang to hell oot of this!” Whereupon Escrick threw the quart-pot
(empty) at L’Estrange’s head, who abandoned thenceforth the society of
the Household Cavalry.
But he had greater success with the infantrymen of the Household
troops--a force whose character, as in a measure its physique, has
deteriorated since the adoption of the three years’ service system.
In the slums of Westminster he gradually corrupted men by beer and
blandishments, with such success that in no long time the rank-and-file
of one whole battalion were tainted with disaffection, and in a fair
way to become dangerous. With all this good fortune, and realising with
a lurid gratification that at least one battalion of Her Majesty’s
Household troops was now little other than a plastic instrument in his
hands, the astute conspirator was well aware that it still behoved
him to work warily and to consolidate the plot by further specific
guarantees for success. He remembered the sardonic adage whose author
was an acute fellow-countryman of his own--that of three Irish
conspirators it might be taken for granted that one was an informer.
There were not many Irish soldiers in the ranks of the Household
Brigade, but there were many men whose fealty to his propaganda, spite
of their professions, he instinctively felt was not to be relied on. So
long as these propaganda were of a loose and general character, there
was not anything very specific for the informer to reveal. But it would
be a very different thing were all or any large proportion of his
converts to be initiated formally into the membership of the disloyal
and anarchical confederacy which he represented. Yet he could not trust
the situation as it stood. All experience taught him how backward to
assert itself actively was the most disaffected community which lacked
the inspiration and initiative of ready and energetic leaders. Out of
the mass of grumbling discontented soldiery L’Estrange set himself to
select a number of men of strongest character, of fiercest nature, of
greatest recklessness of consequences. This winnowing method he carried
out both in the Scarlet Hussars and in the Household Infantry, and
having recruited to his behests a band of desperadoes in either corps,
he had those “select men” sworn by detachments into memberhood of the
Regenerators at the obscure branch lodge whose quarters were in the
Natty Coster beerhouse up Skin-the-Rabbit Court off the New Cut.
Of all the Socialistic workers and plotters who were now actively
furthering the cause in London, only two men, Sergeant L’Estrange and
Shere Ali Beg, the Lascar, were aware that its leading fosterer was
Oronzha, the apparently _dégagé_ gentleman who, because of the lavish
entertainments he was giving so frequently in his sumptuous house in
Bruton Street, and by reason of financial good offices judiciously
dispensed among influential people, was rapidly making for himself a
position in society. L’Estrange naturally regarded as his chief in
the work of the dissemination of anarchy in the metropolis of Great
Britain the strange and mysterious man whom he had first met on the
_Chybassa_, and who had proved himself in intimate touch with the
Socialist leaders of the Continent. He visited Bruton Street under
cover of night, his errand being to report to Oronzha the measure of
success which he had reached in his mission to sap the loyalty of the
garrison of London.
To his surprise, he found the enigmatical Oronzha strangely indifferent
to the tidings brought him; and, what struck him forcibly as still more
strange, quite lukewarm in his tone in regard to the enterprise as a
whole.
“Thanks,” drawled the swarthy sybarite as he lit a perfumed cigarette;
“all that is very interesting, and I’m sure, my dear L’Estrange, you
have done wonders--positive wonders. As for the civilian element, it,
too, is fairly ripe, and I believe we might give the signal to-morrow.
But there are reasons, my dear L’Estrange--I won’t explain them--why
the _émeute_ had better be postponed for a while. Sedition is a
commodity that does not spoil by keeping, but rather improves. Don’t
let your soldier-fellows get lukewarm, but don’t allow them to come to
full-cock for the present--there’s a broken metaphor for you, and an
obsolete one to boot! By the way, how about that quixotic Lord Ebor of
your regiment? He is your captain, is he not?”
“Yes,” replied L’Estrange, restraining his surprise at this abrupt
change of subject on Oronzha’s part. “Ebor, born aristocrat as he is, I
believe would go almost any length with us, when once thoroughly imbued
with the idea that he would be furthering the welfare of humanity at
large.”
“He is the man of all others,” said Oronzha musingly, “whom I want
to see involved with us up to the hilt. The truth is, L’Estrange,”
continued Oronzha, springing to his feet and speaking earnestly--“the
truth is, d--n him! I want him ruined socially, utterly and beyond
recovery--he has thwarted me in a matter very dear to me. Can you help
in this?”
“I think I can succeed in compromising him completely with us, if that
is what you aim at,” replied L’Estrange. “It is a result you must not
expect all of a sudden. Ebor is an officer and a gentleman. He is a
dreamer, and he has what the Scotch call ‘a bee in the bonnet’; but it
is a ‘far cry’ from that to being a traitor. However, I have studied
his character, and I believe I see my way.”
Oronzha was a shrewd man, but he had formed an erroneous estimate of
L’Estrange’s character. He reckoned him simply a serviceable tool, whom
he could use for his purposes, and drop when he chose. L’Estrange,
in reality, with his Irish mother-wit and the added acumen which his
Russian experiences had given him, had seen through Oronzha’s veil of
new-born indifference, and had penetrated the purely personal motive
actuating that dark schemer.
“This man,” mused L’Estrange, as he walked away from Bruton
Street--“this man is now simply playing with Socialism for his own
ends. He is not whole-souled in the cause. His real aim--why, I know
not, nor do I care--is to bring Lord Ebor to grief. That accomplished,
Socialism in London may go hang for him, and the enthusiasts who are
working to bring about anarchy he will leave to their fate with a light
heart, or indeed will, as like as not, betray them.”
He, L’Estrange, had been content for the time to be the instrument of a
powerful man who was sincere in the cause; but he was not the man to be
a tool of a wily dissimulator. Two master-motives swayed him--personal
ambition and bitter hate against England. As he pondered, he believed
that he saw his way to gratify both motives, and that too by a line of
action wholly independent of the specious but treacherous Oronzha.