AWF'LY glad you've been able to come!' said Mr. Pratte, leading the
way to his dogcart, 'quite a marked figure, in his broad red shoulders,
among the dark-coloured crowd at the station. 'There's so much going on
in the village I was afraid you'd change your mind. Frightful state of
funk, I assure you, every time the post came in!' Mr. Pratte spoke to
Lady Torquilin, but looked across at me. We are considerably more simple
than this in America. If a gentleman wants to say something polite to
you, he never thinks of transmitting it through somebody else. But your
way is much the most convenient. It gives one the satisfaction of being
complimented without the embarrassment of having to reply in properly
negative terms. So it was Lady Torquilin who said how sorry we should
have been to miss it, and I found no occasion for remark until we were
well started. Then I made the unavoidable statement that Aldershot
seemed to be a pretty place, though I am afraid it did not seriously
occur to me that it was.
'Oh, it's a hole of sorts!' remarked Mr. Pratte. 'But to see it in its
pristine beauty you should be here when it rains. It's adorable then!'
By that time I had observed that Mr. Pratte had very blue eyes, with a
great deal of laugh in them. His complexion you could find in America
only at the close of the seaside season, among the people, who have just
come home, and even then it would be patchy--it would not have the solid
richness of tint that Mr. Pratte's had. It was a wholesome complexion,
and it went very well with the rest of Mr. Pratte. I liked its tones of
brown and red, and the way it deepened in his nose and the back of his
neck. In fact, I might as well say in the beginning that I liked Mr.
Pratte altogether--there was something very winning about him. His
manner was variable: sometimes extremely flippant, sometimes--and then
he let his eyeglass drop--profoundly serious, and sometimes, when he
had it in mind, preserving a level of cynical indifference that
was impressively interesting, and seemed to stand for a deep and
unsatisfactory experience of life. For the rest, he was just a tall
young subaltern, very anxious to be amused, with a dog.
Mr. Pratte went on to say that he was about the only man in the place
not on parade. There was some recondite reason for this, which I have
forgotten. Lady Torquilin asked him how his mother and sisters were, and
he said: 'Oh, they were as fit as possible, thanks, according to latest
despatches,' which I at once mentally put down as a lovely idiom for use
in my next Chicago letter. I wanted, above all things, to convince them
at home that I was wasting no time so far as the language was concerned;
and I knew they would not understand it, which was, of course, an
additional pleasure. I would express myself very clearly about it
though, I thought, so as not to suggest epilepsy or anything of that
sort.
Americans are nearly always interested in public buildings. We are
very proud of our own, and generally point them out to strangers before
anything else, and I was surprised that Mr. Pratte mentioned nothing of
the sort as we drove through Aldershot. So the first one of any size or
importance that met my eye I asked him about. 'That, I suppose, is
your jail?' I said, with polite interest, as we came in sight of a long
building with that simplicity of exterior that always characterises
jails. Our subaltern gave vent to a suppressed roar. 'What is she saying
now?' asked Lady Torquilin, who had not been paying attention.
'She says--oh, I say, Auntie, what a score! Miss Wick has just pointed
out that building as Aldershot jail!'
'Isn't it?' said I.
'I'm afraid Miss Wick is pullin' our leg, Auntie!'
Now, I was in the back seat, and what could have induced Mr. Pratte to
charge me with so unparalleled and impossible a familiarity I couldn't
imagine, not being very far advanced in the language at the time; but
when Mr. Pratte explained that the buildings I referred to were the
officers' quarters, with his own colonel's at one end--and 'Great
Scott!' said Mr. Pratte, going off again, 'What would the old man say to
that?'--I felt too much overcome by my own stupidity to think about
it. I have since realised that I was rather shocked. It was, of course,
impossible to mention public buildings again in any connection, and,
although I spent a long and agreeable day at Aldershot, if you were to
ask me whether it had so much as a town pump, I couldn't tell you. But
I must say I am not of the opinion that it had. To speak American, it
struck me as being rather a one-horse town, though nothing could be
nicer than I found it as a military centre.
We drove straight out of town to the parade-ground, over a road that
wound through rugged-looking, broken fields, yellow with your wonderful
flaming gorse and furze, which struck me as contrasting oddly with
the neatness of your landscapes generally. When I remarked upon their
uncultivated state, Mr. Pratte said, with some loftiness, that military
operations were not advantageously conducted in standing corn--meaning
wheat--and I decided for the rest of the day to absorb information, as
far as possible, without inquiring for it.
It was a lovely day--no clouds, no dust, nothing but blue sky, and
sunshine on the gorse; and plenty of people, all of whom seemed to have
extreme views upon the extraordinary fineness of the weather, were on
their way to the parade-ground, chiefly driving in dogcarts. Whenever we
passed a lady in anything more ambitious, Mr. Pratte invariably saluted
very nicely indeed, and told Lady Torquilin that she was the wife of
Colonel So-and-so, commanding the somethingth something. And I noticed
all through the day what a great deal of consideration these ladies
received from everybody, and what extraordinary respect was accorded to
their husbands. I have no doubt it is a class distinction of yours, and
very proper; but I could not help thinking of the number of colonels and
their families we have at home, and how little more we think of them on
that account. Poppa's head man in the baking-powder business for years
was a colonel--Colonel Canister; so is poppa himself--and I never knew
either of them show that they thought anything of it. I suppose momma's
greatest friend is Mrs. Colonel Pabbly, but that is because their tastes
are similar and their families about the same age. For that matter, I
daresay one-third of the visiting-cards momma receives have 'Colonel'
between the 'Mrs.' and the last name. It is really no particular
distinction in America.
We were rather late, and all the best places had been taken up by the
dogcarts of other people. They formed an apparently unbroken front, or,
more properly, back, wherever we wanted to get in. By some extraordinary
means, however, more as a matter of course than anything else--it
couldn't have been done in America--Mr. Pratte inserted his dogcart in
an extremely advantageous position, and I saw opposite, and far off,
the long, long double line of soldiers, stretching and wavering as
the country dipped and swelled under the sky. 'In a minute,' said Mr.
Pratte, 'you'll hear the "furious joy"'--and an instant later there came
splitting and spitting against the blue, from east to west, and from
west to east, the chasing white smoke-jets of the feu de joie. You have
a few very good jokes in England.
It seemed to me that two of the bands which defied each other for
the rest of the morning began playing at that instant to prevent any
diminution in the furious joy, while the long line of soldiers broke up
into blocks, each block going off somewhere by itself; and Mr. Pratte
told Lady Torquilin about a dance in town the night before, where he met
a lot of people he loved.
'Was the fair and only one there?' Lady Torquilin inquired with
archness; and Mr. Pratte's countenance suddenly became rueful as he
dropped his eyeglass. 'Yes,' he said; 'but there's a frost on--we
don't play with each other any more!' And I believe other confidences
followed, which I did not feel entitled to hear, so I divided my
attention between the two bands and the parade. One band stood still at
a little distance, and played as hard as possible continually, and every
regiment sent its own band gloriously on ahead of it with the colonel,
generally getting the full significance out of a Scotch jig, which Mr.
Pratte said was the 'march-past.' It made a most magnificently effective
noise.
I hope the person for whose benefit that parade was chiefly intended--I
believe there is always some such person in connection with parades--was
as deeply impressed with it as I was. It was the first time I had ever
seen English soldiers in bulk, and they presented a threatening solidity
which I should think would be very uninteresting to the enemy. There are
more interstices in our regiments--I think it must be admitted that we
are nationally thinner than you are. Besides, what we are still in the
habit of calling 'our recent unpleasantness' happened about a quarter of
a century ago, and I shouldn't think myself that a taste for blood could
survive that period of peace and comfort, to be very obvious. Certainly,
Chicago parades had not prepared me for anything so warlike as this. Not
that I should encourage anybody to open hostilities with us, however.
Though we are thin, we might be found lively.
The cavalry regiments were splendid, with the colonel's horse as
conscious as anybody of what was expected of him, as the colonel's
horse, stepping on ahead; and particularly the Lancers, with their gay
little pennons flying; but there was not the rhythmic regularity in
their movement that was so beautiful to see in the infantry
coming after.
"Lady Torquilin found it very absurd--there were so many points to notice
that were more admirable--that the thing I liked best in the whole parade
was that long, quick, instant crinkle that we saw from the rear as every
man bent his knee at once; but it seemed to have the whole essence of
martial order in it, and to hold great fascination. That, and the swing
of the Highlanders' kilts, and the gleam of the sun on their philabegs,
and the pride of their marching."
That Aldershot Highland regiment, with its screaming bagpipes, seemed,
to my Chicago imagination, to have marched straight out of Inkermann.
Then came the South Wales Borderers, and I heard the story of the
Isandula colours, with the Queen's little gold wreath above them, that
went, preciously furled, in the middle. I wished then--though it is not
consistent with the Monroe doctrine--that we had a great standing army,
with traditions and a constant possibility of foreign fighting. It
may be discouraging to the increase of the male population, but it
encourages sentiment, and is valuable on that account.
So they all came and passed and went, and came and passed and went
again, three times--the whole ten thousand cavalry, infantry, artillery,
commissariat, ambulance, doctors, mules, and all--with a great dust, and
much music, and a tremendous rattling and bumping when the long waggons
came, at the rear of which a single soldier sat in each, with his legs
hanging down looking very sea-sick and unhappy. And they showed me a
prince-subaltern, walking through the dust beside his company with the
others. Nobody seemed to see anything remarkable in this but me, so I
thought it best to display no surprise. But the nominal nature of some
privileges in England began to grow upon me. I also saw a mule--a stout,
well-grown, talented mule--who did not wish to parade. I was glad of
the misbehaviour of that mule. It reduced to some extent the gigantic
proportions of my respect for the British Army.
I met some of the colonels, and their wives and daughters, afterwards,
and in most cases I was lost in admiration of the military tone of the
whole family. Chicago colonels often have very little that is strikingly
military about them, and their families nothing at all. But here the
daughters carried themselves erect, moved stiffly but briskly, and
turned on their heels as sharply as if they were on the parade-ground. I
suppose it would be difficult to live in such constant association with
troops and barracks, and salutes and sentries, and the word of command,
without assimilating somewhat of the distinctive charm of these things;
and the way some of the colonels' ladies clipped their sentences, and
held their shoulders, and otherwise identified themselves with their
regiments, was very taking. It explained itself further when I saw
the 'quarters' in which one or two of them kept house--very pleasant
quarters, where we received most interesting and delightful hospitality.
But it would be odd if domesticity in a series of rooms very square
and very similar, with 'C. O.' painted in black letters over all their
doors, did not develop something a little different from the ordinary
English lady accustomed to cornices and portières.
Then came lunch at the mess, at which, as the colonel took care of Lady
Torquilin, I had the undivided attention of Mr. Oddie Pratte, which I
enjoyed. Mr. Pratte was curious upon the subject of American girls
at home--he told me he began to believe himself misinformed about
them--seriously, and dropping his eyeglass. He would like to
know accurately--under a false impression one made such awkward
mistakes--well, for instance, if it were true that they were up to all
sorts of games at home, how was it they were all so deucedly solemn when
they came over here? Mr. Pratte hoped I wouldn't be offended--of course,
he didn't mean that I was solemn--but--well, I knew what he meant--I
must know! And wouldn't I have some more sugar for those strawberries?
'I like crowds of sugar, don't you?' said Mr. Oddie Pratte. Another
thing, he had always been told that they immediately wanted to see
Whitechapel. Now he had asked every American girl he'd met this season
whether she had seen Whitechapel, and not one of'em had.
He wasn't going to ask me on that account. They didn't, as a rule, seem
to see the joke of the thing. Mr. Pratte would like to know if I had
ever met the M'Clures, of New York--Nellie M'Clure was a great pal of
his--and was disappointed that I hadn't. The conversation turned to
India, whither Mr. Pratte's regiment was ordered to proceed immediately,
and I received a good deal of information as to just how amusing life
might be made there from Mr. Pratte. 'They say a man marries as soon
as he learns enough Anglo-Indian to propose in!' he remarked, with
something like anticipative regret. 'First dance apt to be fatal--bound
to bowl over before the end of the season. Simla girl is known to be
irresistible.' And Lady Torquilin, catching this last, put in her oar in
her own inimitable way. 'You're no nephew of mine, Oddie,' said she, 'if
you can't say "No."' Whereat I was very sorry for Oddie, and forgave him
everything.
There was tea on the lawn afterwards, and bagpipes to the full
lung-power of three Highlanders at once, walking up and down, and
beating time on the turf with one foot in a manner that was simply
extraordinary considering the nature of what they were playing; and
conversation with more Aldershot ladies, followed by an inspection in
a body of Mr. Pratte's own particular corner of the barracks, full of
implements of war, and charming photographs, and the performance of Mr.
Pratte's intellectual, small dog. That ended the Aldershot parade. We
have so few parades of any sort in America, except when somebody of
importance dies--and then they are apt to be depressing--that I was
particularly glad to have seen it.