we ante out. Some."
"Ah, Yus," agreed the Lance-Corporal. "Damned if I wouldn't chawnce me arm19 and go fer 'im meself before we leave—on'y I'm expectin' furver permotion afore long. But fer that I'd take it up meself"—and he glanced at Dam.
"Ketch the little swine at it," remarked Trooper Herbert Hawker, as loudly as he dared, to his "towny," Trooper Henry Bone. "'Chawnst 'is arm!' It's 'is bloomin' life 'e'd chawnce if that Young Jock got settin' abaht 'im. Not 'arf!" and the exotic of the Ratcliffe Highway added most luridly expressed improprieties anent the origins of the Lance-Corporal, his erstwhile enemy and, now, superior officer, in addition.
"That's enough," said Dam shortly.
"Yep. Quit those low-browed sounds, guttermut, or I'll get mad all over," agreed Fish, whose marvellous vocabulary included no foul words. There was no need for them.
"Hi halso was abaht ter request you not to talk beastial, Mr. 'Erbert 'Awker," chimed in Trooper "Henery" Bone, anxious to be on the side of the saints. "Oo'd taike you to be the Missin' Hair of a noble 'ouse when you do such—'Missin' Hair!' Missin' Link more like," he added with spurious indignation.
The allusion was to the oft-expressed belief of Trooper Herbert Hawker, a belief that became a certainty and subject for bloodshed and battle after the third quart or so, that there was a mystery about his birth.
There was, according to his reputed papa….
The plotters plotted, and Dam completed the burnishing of his arms, spurs, buckles, and other glittering metal impedimenta (the quantity of which earned the Corps its barrack-room soubriquet of "the Polish Its"), finished the flicking of spots of pipe-clay from his uniform, and dressed for Guard.
Being ready some time before he had to parade, he sat musing on his truckle-bed.
What a life! What associates (outside the tiny band of gentlemen-rankers). What cruel awful publicity of existence—that was the worst of all. Oh, for a private room and a private coat, and a meal in solitude! Some place of one's own, where one could express one's own individuality in the choice and arrangement of property, and impress it upon one's environment.
One could not even think in private here.
And he was called a private soldier! A grim joke indeed, when the crying need of one's soul was a little privacy.
A private soldier!
Well—and what of the theory of Compensations, that all men get the same sum-total of good and bad, that position is really immaterial to happiness? What of the theory that more honour means also more responsibility and worry, that more pay also means more expenses and a more difficult position, that more seniority also means less youth and joy—that Fate only robs Peter to pay Paul, and, when bestowing a blessing with one hand, invariably bestows a curse with the other?
Too thin.
Excellent philosophy for the butterfly upon the road, preaching contentment to the toad, who, beneath the harrow, knows exactly where each tooth-point goes. Let the butterfly come and try it.
What a life!
Not so bad at first, perhaps, for a stout-hearted, hefty sportsman, during recruit days when everything is novel, there is something to learn, time is fully occupied, and one is too busy to think, too busy evading strange pit-falls, and the just or (more often) unjust wrath of the Room Corporal, the Squadron Orderly Sergeant, the Rough-Riding Corporal, the Squadron Sergeant-Major, the Rough-Riding Sergeant-Major, the Regimental Sergeant-Major, the Riding-Master.
But when, to the passed "dismissed soldier," everything is familiar and easy, weary, flat, stale and unprofitable?
The (to one gently nurtured) ghastly food, companions, environment, monotony—the ghastly ambitions!
Fancy an educated gentleman's ambitions and horizon narrowed to a good-conduct "ring," a stripe in the far future (and to be a Lance-Corporal with far more duty and no more pay, in the hope of becoming a Corporal—that comfortable rank with the same duty and much more pay, and little of the costly gold-lace to mount, and heavy expenses to assume that, while putting the gilt on, takes it off, the position of Sergeant); and, for the present, to "keep off the peg," not to be "for it," to "get the stick," for smartest turn-out, to avoid the Red-Caps,20 to achieve an early place in the scrimmage at the corn-bin and to get the correct amount of two-hundred pounds in the corn-sack when drawing forage and corn; to placate Troop Sergeants, the Troop Sergeant-Major and Squadron Sergeant-Major; to have a suit of mufti at some safe place outside and to escape from the branding searing scarlet occasionally; possibly even the terrible ambition to become an Officer's servant so as to have a suit of mufti as a right, and a chance of becoming Mess-Sergeant and then Quarter-Master, and perhaps of getting an Honorary Commission without doing a single parade or guard after leaving the troop!…
What a life for a man of breeding and refinement!… Fancy having to remember the sacred and immeasurable superiority of a foul-mouthed Lance-Corporal who might well have been your own stable-boy, a being who can show you a deeper depth of hell in Hell, wreak his dislike of you in unfair "fatigues," and keep you at the detested job of coal-drawing on Wednesdays; who can achieve a "canter past the beak"21 for you on a trumped-up charge and land you in the "digger,"22 who can bring it home to you in a thousand ways that you are indeed the toad beneath the harrow. Fancy having to remember, night and day, that a Sergeant, who can perhaps just spell and cypher, is a monarch to be approached in respectful spirit; that the Regimental Sergeant-Major, perhaps coarse, rough, and ignorant, is an emperor to be approached with fear and trembling; that a Subaltern, perhaps at school with you, is a god not to be approached at all. Fancy looking forward to being "branded with a blasted worsted spur," and, as a Rough-Riding Corporal, receiving a forfeit tip from each young officer who knocks off his cap with his lance in Riding-School….
Well! One takes the rough with the smooth—but perceives with great clearness that the (very) rough predominates, and that one does not recommend a gentleman to enlist, save when a Distinguished Relative with Influence has an early Commission ready in his pocket for him.
Lacking the Relative, the gently-nurtured man, whether he win to a Commission eventually or not, can only do one thing more rash than enlist in the British Army, and that is enlist in the French Foreign Legion.
Discipline for soul and body? The finest thing in all the world—in reason. But the discipline of the tram-horse, of the blinded bullock at the wheel, of the well-camel, of the galley-slave—meticulous, puerile, unending, unchanging, impossible …? Necessary perhaps, once upon a time—but hard on the man of brains, sensibility, heart, and individuality.
Soul and body? Deadly for the soul—and fairly dangerous for the body in the Cavalry Regiment whose riding-master prefers the abominable stripped-saddle training to the bare-backed….
Dam yawned and looked at the tin clock on the shelf above the cot of the Room Corporal. Half an hour yet…. Did time drag more heavily anywhere in the world?…
His mind roamed back over his brief, age-long life in the Queen's Greys and passed it in review.
The interview with the Doctor, the Regimental Sergeant-Major, the Adjutant, the Colonel—the
