MUCH ADO ABOUT ALMOST NOTHING—A TROOPER.
Mr. Ormonde Delorme, Second Lieutenant of the 34th Lancers, sat in his
quarters at Aldershot, reading and re-reading with mingled feelings a
letter from the woman he loved.
It is one thing to extract a promise from The Woman that she will turn
to you for help if ever your help should be needed (knowing that there
could be no greater joy than to serve her at any cost whatsoever,
though it led to death or ruin), but it is quite another thing when
that help is invited for the benefit of the successful rival!
To go to the world’s end for Lucille were a very small matter to
Ormonde Delorme—but to go across the road for the man who had won her
away, was not.
For Dam _had_ won her away from him, Delorme considered, inasmuch as he
had brought him to Monksmead, time after time, had seen him falling in
love with Lucille, had received his confidences, and spoken no warning
word. Had he said but “No poaching, Delorme,” nothing more would have
been necessary; he would have kept away thenceforth, and smothered the
flame ere it became a raging and consuming fire. No, de Warrenne had
served him badly in not telling him plainly that there was an
understanding between him and his cousin, in letting him sink more and
more deeply over head and ears in love, in letting him go on until he
proposed to Lucille and learnt from her that while she liked him better
than any man in the world but one—she did not love him, and that,
frankly, yes, she _did_ love somebody else, and it was hopeless for him
to hope….
He read the letter again:—
“MY DEAR ORMONDE,
“This is a begging letter, and I should loathe to write it, under the
circumstances, to any man but such a one as you. For I am going to ask
a great deal of you and to appeal to that nobleness of character for
which I have always admired you and which made you poor Dam’s hero from
Lower School days at Wellingborough until you left Sandhurst (and,
alas! quarrelled with him—or rather with his memory—about me). That was
a sad blow to me, and I tell you again as I told you before, Dam had
not the faintest notion that _I_ cared for _him_ and would not have
told me that he cared for me had I not shown it. Your belief that he
didn’t trouble to warn you because he had me safe is utterly wrong,
absurd, and unjust.
“When you did me the great honour and paid me the undeserved and
tremendous compliment of asking me to marry you, and I told you that I
could not, and _why_ I could not, I never dreamed that Dam could care
for me in that way, and I knew that I should never marry any one at all
unless he did.
“And on the same occasion, Ormonde, you begged me to promise that if
ever you could serve me in any way, I would ask for your help. You were
a dear romantic boy then, Ormonde, and I loved you in a different way,
and cried all night that you and I could not be friends without thought
of love, and I most solemnly promised that I would turn to you if I
ever needed help that you could give. (Alas, I thought to myself then
that nobody in the world could do anything for me that Dam could not
do, and that I should never need help from others while he lived.)
“I want your help, Ormonde, and I want it for Dam—and me.
“You have, of course, heard some garbled scandal about his being driven
away from home and cut off from Sandhurst by grandfather. I need not
ask if you have believed ill of him and I need not say he is absolutely
innocent of any wrong or failure whatever. He is _not_ an effeminate
coward, he is as brave as a lion. He is a splendid hero, Ormonde, and I
want you to simply strangle and kill any man who says a word to the
contrary.
“When he left home, he enlisted, and Haddon Berners saw him in uniform
at Folkestone where he had gone from Canterbury (cricket week) to see
Amelia Harringport’s gang. Amelia whose sister is to be the Reverend
Mrs. Canon Mellifle at Folkestone, you know, met the wretched Haddon
being rushed along the front by a soldier and nearly died at the
sight—she declares he was weeping!
“Directly she told me I guessed at once that he had met Dam and either
insulted or cut him, and that poor Dam, in his bitter humour and
self-loathing had used his own presence as a punishment and had made
the Haddock walk with him! Imagine the company of Damocles de Warrenne
being anything but an ennobling condescension! Fancy Dam’s society a
horrible injury and disgrace! To a thing like Haddon Berners!
“Well, I simply haunted Folkestone after that, and developed a love for
Amelia Harringport and her brothers that surprised them—hypocrite that
I am! (but I was punished when they talked slightingly of Dam and she
sneered at the man whom she had shamelessly pursued when all was well
with him. She ‘admires’ Haddon now.)
“At last I met him on one of my week-end visits—on a Sunday evening it
was—and I simply flew at him in the sight of all respectable,
prayer-book-displaying, before-Church-parading, well-behaved
Folkestone, and kissed him nearly to death…. And can you believe a
woman could be such a _fool_, Ormonde—while carefully noting the ‘2
Q.G.’ on his shoulder-straps, I never thought to find out his
_alias_—for of course he hides his identity, thinking as he does, poor
darling boy, that he has brought eternal disgrace on an honoured name—a
name that appears twice on the rolls of the V.C. records.
“Ormonde, were it not that it would _increase_ his misery and agony of
mind I would run away from Monksmead, take a room near the Queen’s
Greys barracks, and haunt the main gates until I saw him again. He
should then tell me how to communicate with him, or I would hang about
there till he did. I’d marry him ‘off the strength’ and live (till I am
‘of age’) by needlework if he would have me. But, of course, he’d
_never_ understand that I’d be happier, and a better woman, in a
Shorncliffe lodging, as a soldier’s wife, than ever I shall be here in
this dreary Monksmead—until he is restored and re-habilitated (is that
the word? I mean—comes into his own as a brave and noble gentleman who
never did a mean or cowardly action in his life).
“And he is _so_ thin and unhappy looking, Ormonde, and his poor hands
are in such a state and his beautiful hair is all hacked about and done
like a soldier’s, all short except for a long piece brushed down his
forehead and round to his cap—oh, dreadful … and he has a scar on his
face! No wonder Amelia never recognized him. Oh, _do_ help me, Ormonde.
I _must_ find out how to address him. I dare not let them know there is
a _D. de Warrenne_ in the regiment—and he’d never get it either—he’s
probably Smith or Jones or Robinson now. If some horrid Sergeant called
out ‘Trooper D. de Warrenne,’ when distributing letters, Dam would
never answer to the name he thinks he has eternally disgraced, and
disgrace it further by dragging it in the mire of the ranks. How _can_
people be such snobs? Isn’t a good private a better man than a bad
officer? Why should there be any ‘taint’ about serving your country in
any capacity?
“How _can_ I find him, Ormonde, unless you help me? I could pay a
servant to hang about the barracks until he recognized Dam—but that
would be horrible for the poor boy. He’d deny it and say the man was
mad, I expect—and it would be most unpleasant and unfair to Dam to set
some one to find out from his comrades what he calls himself. If he
chooses to hide from what he thinks is the chance of further disgracing
his people, and suffers what he does in order to remain hidden, shall
_I_ be the one to do anything to show him up and cause him worse
suffering—expose him to a servant?
“How _can_ I get him a letter that shall not have his name on it? If I
wrote to his Colonel or the Adjutant and enclosed a letter with just
‘Dam’ on it they’d not know for whom it was meant—and I dare not tell
them his real name.
“Could you get a letter to him, Ormonde, without letting him know that
you know he is a private soldier, and without letting a soul know his
real name?
“I do apologize for the length of this interminable letter, but if you
only knew the _relief_ it is to me to be doing something that may help
him, and to be talking, or rather writing about him, you would forgive
me.
“His name must not be mentioned here. Think of it!
“Oh, if it only would not make him _more_ unhappy, I would go to him
this minute, and refuse ever to leave him again.
“Does that sound unmaidenly, Ormonde? I don’t care whether it does or
not, nor whether it _is_ or not. I love him, and he loves me. I am his
_friend_. Could I stay here in luxury if it would make him happier to
marry me? Am I a terribly abandoned female? I told Auntie Yvette just
what I had done, and though it simply saved her life to know he had not
committed suicide (I believe she _worshipped_ father)—she seemed
mortally shocked at me for behaving so. I am not a bit ashamed though.
Dam is more important than good form, and I had to show him in the
strongest possible way that he was dearer to me than ever. If it _was_
‘behaving like a servant-girl’—all honour to servant-girls, I think …
considering the circumstances. You should have seen his face before he
caught sight of me. Yes—_and_ after, too. Though really I think he
suffered more from my kissing him—in uniform, in the street—than if I
had cut him. It would be only for the minute though … it _must_ comfort
him _now_, and always, to think that I love him so (since he loves
_me_—and always has done). But what I must know before I can sleep
peacefully again is the name by which he goes in the ‘2 Q.G’s.,’ so
that I can write and comfort him regularly, send him things, and make
him buy himself out when he sees he has been foolish and wicked in
supposing that he has publicly disgraced himself and his name and us.
And I’m going to make Grandfather’s life a misery, and go about skinny
and ragged and weeping, and say: ‘_This_ is how you treat the daughter
of your dead friend, you wicked, cruel, unjust old man,’ until he
relents and sends for Dam and gets him into the Army properly…. But I
am afraid Dam will think it his silly duty to flee from me and all my
works, and hide himself where the names of de Warrenne and Stukeley are
unknown and cannot be disgraced.
“I rely on you, Ormonde,
“Your ashamed grateful friend,
“LUCILLE GAVESTONE.”
Second Lieutenant Delorme rang the bell.
“Bradshaw,” he said, as his soldier-servant appeared. “And get me a
telegraph form.”
“Yussir,” said Private Billings, and marched to the Mess ante-room
purposefully, with hope in his heart that Mr. Delorme ’ad nothink less
than a ’alf dollar for the telegram and would forgit to arx for the
chainge, as was his occasional praiseworthy procedure.
Mr. Delorme, alas, proved to have a mean and vulgar shilling, the which
he handed to Private Billings with a form containing the message:—
“Can do. So cheer up. Writing his adjutant, pal of mine. Coming over
Saturday if get leave. Going Shorncliffe if necessary. Leave due. Dam
all right. Will blow over. Thanks for letting me help.”
“’Fraid they don’ give no tick at the Telegraft Orfis, Sir,” observed
Private Billings, who, as quondam “trained observer” of his troop, had
noted the length of the telegram and the shortness of the allowance
therefor.
“What the deuce…?”
“This is more like a ’alf-dollar job, Sir,” he groaned, waving the
paper, “wot wiv’ the haddress an’ all.”
“Oh—er—yes, bit thick for a bob, perhaps; here’s half a sov….”
“_That’s_ more like ‘_’Eres to yer_,’ Mr. D——” remarked the good
man—outside the door. “And don’t yer werry about trifles o’ chainge. Be
a gent!”
Lucille read and re-read the telegram in many ways.
“Can do so. Cheer up. Writing his adjutant. Pal of mine coming over
Saturday. If get leave going Shorncliffe if necessary leave due Dam.
All right will blow over thanks.” No, _that_ wouldn’t do.
(What a pity people _would_ not remember when writing telegrams that
the stops and capitals they put are ignored by the operators.)
At last, the wish being father to the thought, she decided it to be
“Can do” (she knew that to be a navy expression). “So cheer up.
Writing. His adjutant a pal of mine. Coming over Saturday if I get
leave. Going Shorncliffe if necessary. Leave due. Dam all right. Will
blow over. Thanks for letting me help.” Which was not far wrong.
Dear old Ormonde! She knew he would not fail her—although he had been
terribly cut up by her rejection of his suit and by his belief that Dam
had let him haunt her in the knowledge that she was his own private
property, secured to him.
Having dispatched his telegram and interviewed his Adjutant, Captain,
and Colonel, Mr. Delorme sat him down and wrote to Lieutenant the
Honourable Reginald Montague Despencer, Adjutant of the Queen’s Greys:—
“MY DEAR MONTY,
“At the Rag. the other day, respectfully dining with my respected
parent, I encountered, respectfully dining with his respected parent,
your embryo Strawberry Leaf, old ‘Punch Peerson’. (Do you remember his
standing on his head on the engine at Blackwater Station when he was
too ‘merry’ to be able to stand steady on his feet?) I learnt that he
is still with you and I want him to do something for me. He’ll be
serious about it if _you_ speak to him about it—and I am writing to him
direct. I’m going to send you a letter (under my cover), and on it will
be one word ‘Dam’ (on the envelope, of course). I want you to give this
to Punch and order him to show it privately to the _gentlemen-rankers_
of the corps till one says he recognizes the force of the word (pretty
forceful, too, what!) and the writing. To this chap he is to give it.
Be good to your poor ‘rankers,’ Monty, I know one damned hard case
among them. No fault of _his_, poor chap. I could say a lot—surprise
you—but I mustn’t. It’s awfully good of you, old chap. I know you’ll
see it through. It concerns as fine a gentleman as ever stepped and
_the_ finest woman!
“Ever thine,
“O. DELORME.”
“Look here, my lambs—or rather, Black Sheep,” quoth Trooper Punch
Peerson one tea-time to Troopers Bear, Little, Goate, Nemo, Burke,
Jones, and Matthewson, “I suppose none of you answers to the name of
‘_Dam_’?”
No man answered, and Trooper Peerson looked at the face of no man, nor
any one at any other.
“No. I thought not. Well, I have a letter addressed in that objurgatory
term, and I am going to place it beneath my pillow before I go out
to-night. If it is there when I come in I’ll destroy it unopened. ‘Nuff
said,’ as the lady remarked when she put the mop in her husband’s
mouth. Origin of the phrase ‘don’t chew the mop,’ I should think,” and
he babbled on, having let his unfortunate friends know that for one of
them he had a letter which might be received by the addressed without
the least loss of his anonymity.
Dam’s heart beat hard and seemed to swell to bursting. He felt
suffocated.
“Quaint superscription,” he managed to observe. “How did you come by
it?” and then wished he had not spoken…. Who but the recipient could be
interested in its method of delivery? If anyone suspected him of being
“Dam” would they not at once connect him with the notorious Damocles de
Warrenne, ex-Sandhurst cadet, proclaimed coward and wretched neurotic
decadent before the pained, disgusted eyes of his county, kicked out by
his guardian … a disgrace to two honoured names. … “The Adjer handed it
over. Thought _I_ was the biggest Damn here, I suppose,” Trooper
Peerson replied without looking up from his plate. “Practical silly
joke I should think. No one here with such a l_oath_some, name as
_Dam_, of course,” but Trooper Punch Peerson had his philosophic
“doots”. He, like others of that set, had heard of a big chap who was a
marvel at Sandhurst with the gloves, sword, horse, and other things,
and who had suddenly and marvellously disappeared into thin air leaving
no trace behind him, after some public scandal or other…. But that was
no concern of Trooper Punch Peerson, gentleman….
With a wary eye on Peerson, Dam lay on his bed, affecting to read a
stale and dirty news-sheet. He saw him slip something beneath his
pillow and swagger out of the barrack-room. Anon no member of the
little band of gentleman-rankers was left. Later, the room was empty,
save for a heavily snoring drunkard and a busy polisher who, at the
shelf-table at the far end of the room, laboured on his jack-boots,
hissing the while, like a groom with a dandy-brush.
Going to Peerson’s bed, Dam snatched the letter, returned to his own,
and flung himself down again—his heart pumping as though he had just
finished a mile race. _Lucille had got a letter to him somehow_.
Lucille was not going to drop him yet—in spite of having seen him a
red-handed, crop-haired, “quiff”-wearing, coarse-looking soldier…. Was
there another woman in the world like Lucille? Would any other girl
have so risen superior to her breeding, and the teachings of Miss
Smellie, as to do what she thought right, regardless of public
scandal…? But he must not give her the opportunity of being seen
talking to a soldier again—much less kissing one. Not that she would
want to kiss him again like that. That was the kiss of welcome, of
encouragement, of proof that she was unchanged to him—her first sight
of him after the _débâcle_. It was the unchecked impulse of a noble
heart—and the action showed that Miss Smellie had been unable to do it
much harm with her miserable artificialities and stiflings of all that
is natural and human and right…. Should he read the letter at once or
treasure it up and keep it as a treat in store? He would hold it in his
hand unopened and imagine its contents. He would spin out the glorious
pleasure of possession of an unopened letter from Lucille. He could, of
course, read it hundreds of times—but he would then soon know it by
heart, and although its charm and value would be no less, it would
merge with his other memories and become a memory itself. He did not
want it to become a memory too soon.
The longer it remained an anticipation, the more distant the day when
it became a memory….
With a groan of “Oh, my brain’s softening and I’m becoming a
sentimentalist,” he opened the letter and read Lucille’s loving,
cheering—yet agonizing, maddening—words:—
“MY OWN DARLING DAM,
“If this letter reaches you safely you are to sit down at once and
write to me to tell me how to address you by post in the ordinary way.
If you don’t I shall come and haunt the entrance to the Lines and
waylay you. People will think I am a poor soul whom you have married
and deserted, or whom you won’t marry. _I’ll_ show up your wicked
cruelty to a poor girl! How would you like your comrades to say ‘Look
out, Bill, your pore wife’s ’anging about the gates’ and to have to lie
low—and send out scouts to see if the coast was clear later on? Don’t
you go playing fast and loose with _me_, master Dam, winning my young
affections, making love to me, kissing me—and then refusing to marry me
after it all! I don’t want to be too hard on you (and I am reasonable
enough to admit that one-and-two a day puts things on a smaller scale
than I have been accustomed to in the home of my fathers—or rather
uncles, or perhaps uncles-in-law), and like the kind Tailor whom the
Haddock advertises (and like the unkind Judge before whom he’ll some
day come for something) I will ‘give you time’. But it’s only a
respite, Mr. de Warrenne. You are not going to trifle with my young
feelings and escape altogether. I have my eye on you—and if I respect
your one-and-twopence a day _now_, it is on the clear understanding
that you share my Little All on the day I come of age. I will trust you
once more, although you _have_ treated me so—bolting and hiding from
your confiding fiancée.
“So write and tell me what you call yourself, so that I can write to
you regularly and satisfy myself that you are not escaping me again.
How _could_ you treat a poor trusting female so—and then when she had
found you again, and was showing her delight and begging to be married
and settled in life—to rush away from her, leaving her and her modest
matrimonial proposals scorned and rejected! For shame, Sir! I’ve a good
mind to come and complain to your Colonel and ask him to make you keep
your solemn promises and marry me….
“Now look here, darling, nonsense aside—I solemnly swear that if you
don’t buy yourself out of the army on the day I come of age (or before,
if you will, and can) I will really come and make you marry me and I
will live with you as a soldier’s wife. If you persist in your
wrong-headed notion of being a ‘disgrace’ (_you_!) then we’ll just
adopt the army as a career, and we’ll go through all the phases till
you get a Commission. I hope you won’t take this course—but if you do,
you’ll be a second Hector Macdonald and retire as Lieutenant-General
Sir Damocles de Warrenne (K.C.B., K.C.M.G., K.C.S.I., D.S.O., and, of
course, V.C.), having confessed to an _alias_. It will be a long time
before we should be in really congenial society, that way, darling, but
I’m sure I should enjoy every hour of it with you, so long as I felt I
was a comfort and happiness to you. And when you got your Commission I
should not be a social drag upon you as sometimes happens. Nor before
it should I be a nuisance and hindrance to you and make you wish you
were ‘shut of the curse of a soldier’. I could ‘rough it’ as well as
you and, besides, there would _be_ no ‘roughing it’ where you were, for
me. It is _here_ that I am ‘roughing it,’ sitting impotent and
wondering what is happening to you, and whether that terrible illness
ever seizes you, and whether you are properly looked after when it
does.
“Now, just realize, dearest Dam—I said I would wait twenty years for
you, if necessary. I would and I will, but don’t make me do it,
darling. Realize how happy I should be if I could only come and sew and
cook and scrub and work for you. Can you understand that life is only
measurable in terms of happiness and that _my_ happiness can only be
where _you,_ are? If you weren’t liable to these seizures I could bear
to wait, but as it is, I can’t. I beg and beseech you not to make me
wait till I am of age, Dam. There’s no telling what may happen to you
and I just can’t bear it. _I’m coming_, if I don’t hear from you, and I
can easily do something to compel you to marry me, if I come. You are
_not_ going to bear this alone, darling, so don’t imagine it. We’re not
going to keep separate shops after all these years, just because you’re
ill with a trouble of some kind that fools can’t understand.
“Now write to me at once and put me in a position to write to you in
the ordinary way—or look out for me! I’m all ready to run away, all
sorts of useful things packed—ready to come and be a soldier’s girl.
“You know that I _do_ what I think I’ll do—you spoke of my
‘steel-straight directness and sweet brave will’ in the poem you were
making about me, you poor funny old boy, when you vanished, and which I
found in your room when I went there to cry, (Oh, _how_ I cried when I
found your odds and ends of verse about me there—I really did think my
heart was ‘broken’ in actual fact.) Don’t make me suffer any more,
darling. I’m sure your Colonel will be sweet about it and give us a
nice little house all to ourselves, now he has seen what a splendid
soldier you are. If you stick to your folly about ‘disgrace’ I need not
tell him our names and Grumper couldn’t take me away from you, even if
he ever found out where we were.
“I could go on writing all night, darling, but I’ll only just say again
_I am going to marry you and take care of you, Dam, in the army or out
of it._
“Your fiancee and friend,
“LUCILLE GAVESTONE.”
Dam groaned aloud.
“Four o’ rum ’ot, is wot _you_ want, mate, for that,” said the
industrious self-improver at the shelf-table. “Got a chill on yer
stummick on sentry-go in the fog an’ rine las’ night…. I’d give a
’ogs’ead to see the bloke who wrote in the bloomin’ Reggilashuns _‘nor
must bloomin’ sentries stand in their blasted sentry-boxes in good or
even in moderate-weather’_ a doin’ of it ’isself in ’is bloomin’
‘moderate weather’ with water a runnin’ down ’is back, an’ ’is feet
froze into a puddle, an’ the fog a chokin’ of ’im, an’ ’is blighted
carbine feelin’ like a yard o’ bad ice—an’ then find the bloomin’
winder above ’is bed been opened by some kind bloke an’ ’is bed a
blasted swamp… Yus—you ’ave four o’ rum ’ot and you’ll feel like the
bloomin’ ’Ouse o’ Lords. Then ’ave a Livin’stone Rouser.” “Oh, shut
up,” said Dam, cursing the Bathos of Things and returning to the
beginning of Lucille’s letter.
In his somewhat incoherent reply, Dam assured Lucille that he was in
the rudest health and spirits, and the particular pet of his Colonel
who inquired after his health almost daily with tender solicitude; that
he had exaggerated his feeling on That Evening when he had kissed
Lucille as a lover, and begged forgiveness; that marriage would
seriously hamper a most promising military career; that he had had no
recurrence of the “fit” (a mere touch of sun); that it would be unkind
and unfair of Lucille to bring scandal and disgrace upon a rising young
soldier by hanging about the Lines and making inquiries about him with
a view to forcing him into marriage, making him keep to a bargain made
in a rash, unguarded moment of sentimentality; that, in any case,
soldiers could not marry until they had a certain income and status,
and, if they did so, it was no marriage and they were sent to jail;
that his worst enemy would not do anything to drag him out once again
into the light of publicity, and disgrace his family further, now that
he had effectually disappeared and was being forgotten; and that he
announced that he was known as Trooper Matthewson (E Troop, The Queen’s
Greys, Cavalry Lines, Shorncliffe) to prevent Lucille from keeping her
most unladylike promise of persecuting him.
Lucille’s next letter was shorter than the first.
“MY DARLING DAM,
“Don’t be such a _priceless_ Ass. Come off it.
“Your own
“LUCILLE.
“P.S.—Write to me properly at once—or expect me on Monday.”
He obeyed, poured out his whole heart in love and thanks and blessings,
and persuaded her that the one thing that could increase his misery
would be her presence, and swore that he would strain every nerve to
appear before her at the earliest possible moment a free man with
redeemed name—provided he could persuade himself he was not _a
congenital lunatic, an epileptic, a decadent—could cure himself of his
mental disease…._