Polson was gone, so far, only to his own room, but so swiftly that it
was impossible to intercept him, and the snick of the bolt in the lock
arrested his father before he had set a single foot upon the stair.
Grim and pale, Polson lit his candles and began to range about the
apartment, drawing out from one recess a pair of heavy walking boots,
and from another a well-worn suit of velveteens which had seen him
through a year or two of sport in the spinny and at the river side. He
cast off the clothes he wore, hastily assumed these stouter garments,
and having encased his legs in a pair of strong leather leggings, he
opened his bedroom door, blew out his candle, and went swiftly down the
stairs into the hall. There the wreckage-of an hour or two ago was all
piled together in one corner, but groping amongst it in the darkness
with both hands, he found a long waterproof overcoat, and after more
search a sealskin shooting cap; appropriating both of these he strode to
the rear of the house, opened the door by which his father had entered
on that night of evil omen, and walked out into the roaring darkness.
He was on the sheltered side of the building and did not as yet feel
the force of the wind. For half a minute he stood with his heart in his
throat, and his hand upon the hasp of the door, straining his ears to
listen. He heard nothing but the insane noises of the night. Suddenly,
he drew the door towards him violently, and it closed with a slam and a
snap. He was outside, and the thing he had purposed was accomplished.
He had said good-bye to the house in which he had learned to walk and
talk--the house which had been his home for the whole of his life,
except for a year or two of earliest infancy, and the sound of the
closing door seemed as if it cut his life in two.
He walked rapidly until he reached the ridge before he encountered the
full violence of the storm, for the wind had shifted within the last
hour or two. Then, stalwart as he was, it caught and whirled him and
sent him running willy-nilly for a hundred yards or more. But there was
not a nail in his boots which was not familiar with every acre of that
country-side for a mile or two, and he found the path with ease and
certainty, and ploughed along it as surely as if it had been broad
daylight, though the night was black as a wolf’s mouth. The bitter wind
and driving rain were welcome to his hot eyes and scalded face, and he
walked with a swift resolution until he had reached the spot from which
in daylight the last view of the house would have been possible. There
he turned, the waterproof coat whipping about his ankles like a torn
sail, and the rain pattering its own music on his broad shoulders.
Dimly, very dimly, he could see--or perhaps he only thought he saw--the
chimneys of the old home rising against a little clearing in the distant
lift of the sky.
So very brief a while ago he had been happy there. Only an hour or two
since he was meditating, between the moves of the game, on the very
words he meant to use in telling Irene that he loved her. Only an hour
or two since every thought was full of hope and ambition, since the path
of honour stood wide open with a vague bright figure beckoning in its
far distance.
A frost in harvest time will ripen grain, and a great grief will give a
sudden maturity to character. It was a boy who dreamed the happy
dreams of that evening; it was a man who turned his back upon the old
homestead, and set out upon his journey through the world.
He had a seven miles’ walk before him, and a black unsheltered night at
the end of it; but he walked as swiftly and as resolutely as if a goal
of comfort had awaited him. When once the hillside was cleared and he
had reached level ground, progress was less difficult, and after the
tremendous tempest of the day the wind gave signs of having blown itself
out. There were pausings and relentings in it, and there were clear
spaces in the sky out of which the stars began to shine keen and clear.
The storm was over by the time when, after two hours of brisk walking,
he had reached his journey’s end, and found himself before the long
bleak wall of the cavalry barracks of the great Midland town. He had a
long spell of waiting before him, and seating himself on a hewn stone
at the side of the barrack gate he filled and lit his pipe, and prepared
himself for a game of patience. Once or twice in the course of the long
night a policeman passed him, turned his bull’s-eye lantern upon his
face, and went by without questioning, and these events made the only
break in the long monotony of the hours. He had at last fallen either
into a stupor or a doze, when suddenly the notes of a bugle sounding the
_reveille_ startled him to his feet, with its urgent call of
Wake! Wake! Wake!
And wake in a hurry--a hurry--a hurry--a hurry,
And Wake! Wake! Wake!
There began to be a faint stir about the place, like the humming in a
hive the inmates of which have been disturbed, and a little while later
the bugle rang out again, in notes that were destined to become familiar
to his ears.
All you that are able
Come down to the stable,
And water your horses and give ‘em some corn.
And if you don’t do it
The Colonel shall know it,
And you shall be punished the very next morn.
Soon afterwards the gates were opened, and a man in uniform appeared
with a carbine tucked beneath his arm and began to pace up and down,
just within the great bare barrack square. Polson marched up to him.
‘Are you recruiting here?’ he asked.
‘We are so,’ the man answered. ‘Do you want to join?’
Polson nodded.
‘Better see the Sergeant in the guardroom,’ the sentry told him. ‘Go
through that door and you will find him there.’
People who read their Dickens, as all men who are privileged to speak
the English language ought to do, will remember a striking little
passage in ‘Oliver Twist,’ in which the author moralises upon the first
dressing of a new-born pauper baby. Until the faded yellow garments
which have done service for many predecessors are wrapped about it,
the baby might be anybody’s child--a Duke’s, or a ploughman’s. But the
livery of its unfortunate estate marks and stamps it at once and gives
it the social caste and _cachet_ it is doomed to wear. But it is not so
when time has developed character, and a change of garb does not work an
actual transformation in the grown man. Polson had purposely chosen the
shabbiest outfit he could find in his whole kit; but he was recognisably
a gentleman at a glance, and as he strode into the guard-room the
Sergeant in charge, who was sitting on the edge of a sloping wooden
bedstead, stood up and saluted him, a fact for which the recruit had to
pay later on.
‘You want recruits here?’ said Polson, and the Sergeant, finding that
he had been betrayed into a sign of respect for one who was willing to
become his own inferior, answered him with a scowling ill-temper.
‘Yes!’ he snapped. ‘Wait there till the orderly room is opened.’
The young man was too full of his own concerns to take offence at a
tone. He sat down quietly and waited. Uniformed men came and went,
and nobody took heed of him until some two hours had gone by, when the
Sergeant awoke him from his reverie.
‘Come this way.’
He followed the Sergeant across the square, and through an open doorway
on the far side of it. The Sergeant turned on him. ‘Take your cap off,
and walk into that room.’ Polson obeyed again, and found himself in the
presence of a young officer who was bending over a sheaf of papers on a
rough table, pen in hand.
‘Man wishes to join, sir,’ said the Sergeant.
The officer looked up and rose to his feet with an exclamation.
‘Good God, Jervase! What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come to take the Queen’s shilling, Volnay,’ Polson answered.
‘Why, what’s become of the commission?’ the other asked. ‘Go outside,
Sergeant. I want to have some talk in private with this gentleman.’
Now, chance had played a queer trick here, for it had led the intending
recruit straight to his oldest and closest chum, his old schoolfellow,
and old Oxford comrade. It had not occurred to him to think what
regiment was quartered in Birmingham at that time, and he had walked
straight towards his purpose without a thought of the possibility of
such an encounter as this.
‘You ain’t serious, old fellow, are you?’ asked Captain Volnay.
‘Yes,’ said Polson, ‘I’m quite serious.’
‘Sit down,’ said Volnay. ‘Of course you’ll tell me just as much and
just as little as you want to. But before you take a step that you can’t
retreat from, you’d better think things over.’
‘No,’ said Polson, ‘I’ve done all the thinking I have need for, and I’ve
made up my mind. You’ll take me, of course?’
‘Look here,’ said Volnay, ‘you won’t like it, and I take the liberty
to tell you so. It’s an infernally disagreeable life--it’s a beast of a
life for a gentleman to live. It’s all very well, of course, if you’re
amongst your own set; but a gentleman ranker is certain to have a hell
of a time. He has all the non-coms on to him out of jealousy; and he’s
bullied and browbeaten beyond endurance. As for the mere rough side of
the living, nobody minds that. But if you do what you intend, you’ll
find before the week’s over that you’ve stepped into a whole tubful of
scalding hot water, and you’ll wish yourself well out of it again.’
‘That’s all right, old chap,’ said Polson. ‘I shan’t be the first to try
it, and I dare say I shall pull through as well as another.’
‘Now, here’s a sample,’ said Volnay with a laugh to take the edge from
his words. ‘Here’s a sample of the sort of thing you’re walking into.
It’ll be a piece of rank impertinence on your part to call me “old chap”
in half an hour’s time, and you mustn’t do it. When you catch sight of
me, it’ll be your business to stand up as stiff as a ramrod and salute
me; and you’ll have to say “sir” when you talk to me. And you won’t like
that. And I shan’t like it. And look here, old chap, you think twice
about it.’
‘I’ve told you already,’ Polson answered, ‘I’ve done all my thinking.’
‘Well,’ said Volnay, ‘wilful must if wilful will. You haven’t been
getting into any sort of mischief, have you?’
‘No,’ said Polson. ‘I’ve done nothing that I have a right to be ashamed
of.’
‘Had a row with the old man?’
‘Yes.’
‘Go home and make it up again, Jervase. A private soldier’s life is a
dog’s life for a man of your breeding, and you’ll find it so.’
‘That’s as may be,’ Polson answered. ‘But I’ve quite made up my mind,
and all the talking in the world will make no difference.’
Within reach of his hand there lay upon the table a loose bunch of
ribbons, red, white, and blue, such as recruiting sergeants were wont to
pin in the hats of their recruits. And Polson, toying with this, found
that the bunch was held together at one end by a pin. He affixed it to
his own cap.
‘Now,’ he said, putting on the cap and rising to his feet, ‘the trick’s
done.’
‘Oh, dear no!’ said Volnay. ‘The trick isn’t done yet, old fellow.
You’ve got to be formally enlisted, and to answer a rigmarole of
questions, and be examined by the regimental doctor, and to take the
oath. The trick isn’t done yet, by a long chalk.’
‘Well,’ said Polson, ‘I shall take it as a favour if you’ll put me
through with as little waste of time as possible, for, to tell you the
truth, I want that shilling, and the sooner I get it the nearer I shall
be to bread and cheese.’
‘Oh!’ said Volnay, ‘I ain’t curious, old chap. I’m not a bit curious;
but if you can do it, I should like you to take me into your
confidence, because I might be of some use. I’m stinking rich, you
know--disgracefully rich. And if that fact’s any good to you, why you’ve
only to say so, and I’m your man.’
‘Oh, no, it isn’t money, Volnay. If it had been, I shouldn’t have made
any scruple about saying so. I can’t talk about it. It’s likely enough
that you may hear everything in time.’
‘There’s no changing you?’ Volnay asked. ‘There’s no getting you to wait
for a week?’
‘There’s no changing me,’ Polson answered, ‘and no getting me to wait.’
‘Oh, very well,’ said Volnay. ‘Just take that and cut across to the
canteen and get some breakfast. Come back here in a quarter of an hour’s
time, and I’ll put you through. You needn’t scruple about taking it: you
can pay me back, for there’s a five-pound bounty, ready money, declared
yesterday, and you’ll have it handed over to you on enlisting.’
Polson took up the proffered sovereign, with something of a lump in his
throat, and turned to go. He had scarce made a step towards the door
when it opened suddenly. This was destined to be a day of strange
encounters, for who should walk almost into his arms but that Major de
Blacquaire who was the present owner of the Droitwich salt mine from
which his father and his uncle had drawn an illicit fortune. There
are men who are born to hate each other at sight; and this Major de
Blacquaire and Polson, though they had but a slight knowledge of each
other, had found time to develop a savage dislike on either side. De
Blacquaire was a man with an exasperatingly cold and supercilious
fashion of speech. He was a band-box dandy, and went scented like a
lady. Polson had once threatened him with a horse-whip, and the Major
had withdrawn from the conflict not because he had any want of physical
courage, but solely because he was too much of a fine gentleman to
brawl. He had never forgotten or forgiven the insult, and Polson had
learned to hate him all the more because he mistook him for a coward.
The two recoiled from each other just in time to avoid collision, for De
Blacquaire had entered hastily. They regarded each other for an instant,
and De Blacquaire’s cynical and contemptuous gaze took in the other from
head to foot, obviously taking note of the mean attire and the signs
of the night march Polson had made. His glance fastened on the bunch of
ribbons floating from the cap, and at that he smiled.
‘Oh!’ he said, with a finicking drawl. ‘You’ve made a bolt of it, have
you?’
‘Say that again,’ said Polson, ‘and I’ll ram it down your throat, and
send a tooth or two along with it.’
‘Indeed,’ said De Blacquaire. ‘I think you’ll find that it won’t pay
you to use such language in your present position, Private Jervase.’
He turned away and, with the whip he carried in his hand, struck a
resounding blow upon the open door. ‘Sergeant!’ he called, ‘bring up a
file of men, and take this man to the guardroom.’
‘On what authority, if you please?’ asked Polson.
‘On the authority of those ribbons, my man,’ De Blacquaire answered.
‘You mistake your authority, friend Popinjay,’ said Polson. ‘I am not in
your service yet.’
‘Has this man enlisted, Volnay?’ asked the Major.
‘No,’ said Volnay, ‘he hasn’t. He means to. And now I see what terms
you’re on, I shall advise him very strongly, as an old friend of mine,
to choose another regiment.’
‘Yes,’ said Polson. ‘I think I’ll choose another regiment. I’m not
hungry for the cat-o’-nine tails, and I should earn it if I were under
this brute’s command five minutes. You’d be a handsome chap in your own
way, Major, if it were not for that silly sneer you’re pleased to carry
about with you. But I warn you that, under any circumstances whatsoever,
if you should presume upon any difference in our rank to insult me by a
word, a gesture, or a look I’ll spoil your beauty for you.’
‘This man’s a friend of yours, is he, Volnay?’ said De Blacquaire,
ignoring his antagonist.
‘Yes,’ said Volnay. ‘A very old friend of mine.’
‘Well, you can keep him with you. I’ve just got my appointment on the
Staff. I’m off for Varna to-morrow, and I don’t suppose that I shall
meet the gentleman again. I want a private word with you. If Mr. Jervase
will be so kind as to relieve us of his presence.’
‘I’ll be back in a quarter of an hour,’ said Polson.
‘All right, old chap,’ Volnay answered, and made haste to add, before
his old chum had left the room, ‘I’m devilish glad you’re going, De
Blacquaire, and the whole regiment will share my sentiments. The mess
will be a devilish sight happier without you.’
At this, the Major’s pale face flushed for an instant, and Polson
grinned sardonically as he strode away. He found his way into the
canteen, made a rough breakfast there, and then returning found Volnay
ready to put him through all the necessary formalities. An old Sergeant
put the regulation questions as to name, age, and employment. Was he
married? No. Was he an apprentice? No. Had he ever at any time offered
himself for Her Majesty’s service, and been refused? No. Had he ever
been tried for any criminal offence? No. Then here was the Queen’s
shilling, and he was enlisted to serve Her Majesty for the term of
twenty years, and was now to report himself to the doctor, and after
passing his examination, would be required to present himself at noon
to be sworn in before the Colonel, and failing so to present himself, he
would be liable to arrest and imprisonment as a rogue and vagabond.
‘So now the trick is done,’ said Volnay, ‘and you can’t undo it. At
another time you could have bought out for thirty pounds; but we shall
be off to Varna in a week or two, and the Queen won’t spare a man she
has once laid hands on for love or money until we have got through the
little brush that’s coming with old Nick and his merry men.’