Soldiers Three - Part 2

“Does Dormer do anything, Sergeant?” Bobby asked with the air of one continuing an interrupted conversation.

“No, sir. Does ‘is dooty like a hortomato,” said the Sergeant, who delighted in long words. “A dirty soldier, and ‘e’s under full stoppages for new kit. It’s covered with scales, sir.”

“Scales? What scales?”

“Fish-scales, sir. ‘E’s always pokin’ in the mud by the river an’ a-cleanin’ them muchly-fish with ‘is thumbs.” Revere was still absorbed in the Company papers, and the Sergeant, who was sternly fond of Bobby, continued, — “‘E generally goes down there when ‘e’s got ‘is skinful, beggin’ your pardon, sir, an’ they do say that the more lush — inebriated ‘e is, the more fish ‘e catches. They call ‘im the Looney Fishmonger in the Comp’ny, sir.”

Revere signed the last paper and the Sergeant retreated.

“It’s a filthy amusement,” sighed Bobby to himself. Then aloud to Revere: “Are you really worried about Dormer?”

“A little. You see he’s never mad enough to send to hospital, or drunk enough to run in, but at any minute he may flare up, brooding and sulking as he does. He resents any interest being shown in him, and the only time I took him out shooting he all but shot me by accident.”

“I fish,” said Bobby, with a wry face. “I hire a country-boat and go down river from Thursday to Sunday, and the amiable Dormer goes with me — if you can spare us both.”

“You blazing young fool!” said Revere, but his heart was full of much more pleasant words.

Bobby, the Captain of a dhoni, with Private Dormer for mate, dropped down the river on Thursday morning — the Private at the bow, the Subaltern at the helm. The Private glared uneasily at the Subaltern, who respected the reserve of the Private.

After six hours, Dormer paced to the stern, saluted, and said — “Beg y’ pardon, sir, but was you ever on the Durh’m Canal?”

“No,” said Bobby Wick. “Come and have some tiffin.”

They ate in silence. As the evening fell, Private Dormer broke forth, speaking to himself —

“Hi was on the Durh’m Canal, jes’ such a night, come next week twelvemonth, a-trailin’ of my toes in the water.” He smoked and said no more till bedtime.

The witchery of the dawn turned the gray river-reaches to purple, gold, and opal; and it was as though the lumbering dhoni crept across the splendours of a new heaven.

Private Dormer popped his head out of his blanket and gazed at the glory below and around.

“Well — damn — my eyes!” said Private Dormer in an awed whisper. “This ‘ere is like a bloomin’ gallantry-show!” For the rest of the day he was dumb, but achieved an ensanguined filthiness through the cleaning of big fish.

The boat returned on Saturday evening. Dormer had been struggling with speech since noon. As the lines and luggage were being disembarked, he found tongue.

“Beg y’ pardon, sir,” he said, “but would you — would you min’ shakin’ ‘ands with me, sir?”

“Of course not,” said Bobby, and he shook accordingly. Dormer returned to barracks and Bobby to mess.

“He wanted a little quiet and some fishing, I think,” said Bobby. “My aunt, but he’s a filthy sort of animal! Have you ever seen him clean ‘them muchly-fish with ‘is thumbs?”

“Anyhow,” said Revere three weeks later, “he’s doing his best to keep his things clean.”

When the spring died, Bobby joined in the general scramble for Hill leave, and to his surprise and delight secured three months.

“As good a boy as I want,” said Revere, the admiring skipper.

“The best of the batch,” said the Adjutant to the Colonel. “Keep back that young skrimshanker Porkiss, sir, and let Revere make him sit up.”

So Bobby departed joyously to Simla Pahar with a tin box of gorgeous raiment.

“Son of Wick — old Wick of Chota-Buldana? Ask him to dinner, dear,” said the aged men.

“What a nice boy!” said the matrons and the maids.

“First-class place, Simla. Oh, ri — ipping!” said Bobby Wick, and ordered new white cord breeches on the strength of it.

“We’re in a bad way,” wrote Revere to Bobby at the end of two months. “Since you left, the Regiment has taken to fever and is fairly rotten with it — two hundred in hospital, about a hundred in cells — drinking to keep off fever — and the Companies on parade fifteen file strong at the outside. There’s rather more sickness in the out-villages than I care for, but then I’m so blistered with prickly-heat that I’m ready to hang myself. What’s the yarn about your mashing a Miss Haverley up there? Not serious, I hope? You’re over-young to hang millstones round your neck, and the Colonel will turf you out of that in double-quick time if you attempt it.”

It was not the Colonel that brought Bobby out of Simla, but a much more to be respected Commandant. The sickness in the out-villages spread, the Bazar was put out of bounds, and then came the news that the Tail Twisters must go into camp. The message flashed to the Hill stations. — “Cholera — Leave stopped — Officers recalled.” Alas, for the white gloves in the neatly soldered boxes, the rides and the dances and picnics that were to be, the loves half spoken, and the debts unpaid! Without demur and without question, fast as tonga could fly or pony gallop, back to their Regiments and their Batteries, as though they were hastening to their weddings, fled the subalterns.

Bobby received his orders on returning from a dance at Viceregal Lodge, where he had but only the Haverley girl knows what Bobby had said or how many waltzes he had claimed for the next ball. Six in the morning saw Bobby at the Tonga Office in the drenching rain, the whirl of the last waltz still in his ears, and an intoxication due neither to wine nor waltzing in his brain.

“Good man!” shouted Deighton of the Horse Battery through the mists. “Whar you raise dat tonga? I’m coming with you. Ow! But I’ve a head and half. I didn’t sit out all night. They say the Battery’s awful bad,” and he hummed dolorously —

     “Leave the what at the what’s-its-name,      Leave the flock without shelter,      Leave the corpse uninterred,      Leave the bride at the altar

“My faith! It’ll be more bally corpse than bride, though, this journey. Jump in, Bobby. Get on, Coachwan!”

On the Umballa platform waited a detachment of officers discussing the latest news from the stricken cantonment, and it was here that Bobby learned the real condition of the Tail Twisters.

“They went into camp,” said an elderly Major recalled from the whist-tables at Mussoorie to a sickly Native Regiment, “they went into camp with two hundred and ten sick in carts. Two hundred and ten fever cases only, and the balance looking like so many ghosts with sore eyes. A Madras Regiment could have walked through ‘em.”

“But they were as fit as be-damned when I left them!” said Bobby.

“Then you’d better make them as fit as be-damned when you rejoin,” said the Major brutally.

Bobby pressed his forehead against the rain-splashed window-pane as the train lumbered across the sodden Doab, and prayed for the health of the Tyneside Tail Twisters. Naini Tal had sent down her contingent with all speed; the lathering ponies of the Dalhousie Road staggered into Pathankot, taxed to the full stretch of their strength; while from cloudy Darjiling the Calcutta Mail whirled up the last straggler of the little army that was to fight a fight, in which was neither medal nor honour for the winning, against an enemy none other than “the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday.”

And as each man reported himself, he said: “This is a bad business,” and went about his own forthwith, for every Regiment and Battery in the cantonment was under canvas, the sickness bearing them company.

Bobby fought his way through the rain to the Tail Twisters’ temporary mess, and Revere could have fallen on the boy’s neck for the joy of seeing that ugly, wholesome phiz once more.

“Keep ‘em amused and interested,” said Revere. “They went on the drink, poor fools, after the first two cases, and there was no improvement. Oh, it’s good to have you back, Bobby! Porkiss is a — never mind.”

Deighton came over from the Artillery camp to attend a dreary mess dinner, and contributed to the general gloom by nearly weeping over the condition of his beloved Battery. Porkiss so far forgot himself as to insinuate that the presence of the officers could do no earthly good, and that the best thing would be to send the entire Regiment into hospital and “let the doctors look after them.” Porkiss was demoralised with fear, nor was his peace of mind restored when Revere said coldly: “Oh! The sooner you go out the better, if that’s your way of thinking. Any public school could send us fifty good men in your place, but it takes time, time, Porkiss, and money, and a certain amount of trouble, to make a Regiment. S’pose you’re the person we go into camp for, eh?”

Whereupon Porkiss was overtaken with a great and chilly fear which a drenching in the rain did not allay, and, two days later, quitted this world for another where, men do fondly hope, allowances are made for the weaknesses of the flesh. The Regimental Sergeant-Major looked wearily across the Sergeants’ Mess tent when the news was announced.

“There goes the worst of them,” he said. “It’ll take the best, and then, please God, it’ll stop.” The Sergeants were silent till one said: “It couldn’t be him!” and all knew of whom Travis was thinking.

Bobby Wick stormed through the tents of his Company, rallying, rebuking, mildly, as is consistent with the Regulations, chaffing the fainthearted; haling the sound into the watery sunlight when there was a break in the weather, and bidding them be of good cheer, for their trouble was nearly at an end; scuttling on his dun pony round the outskirts of the camp and heading back men who, with the innate perversity of British soldiers, were always wandering into infected villages, or drinking deeply from rain-flooded marshes; comforting the panic-stricken with rude speech, and more than once tending the dying who had no friends — the men without “townies”; organizing, with banjos and burnt cork, Sing-songs which should allow the talent of the Regiment full play; and generally, as he explained, “playing the giddy garden-goat all round.”

“You’re worth half a dozen of us, Bobby,” said Revere in a moment of enthusiasm. “How the devil do you keep it up?”

Bobby made no answer, but had Revere looked into the breast-pocket of his coat he might have seen there a sheaf of badly-written letters which perhaps accounted for the power that possessed the boy. A letter came to Bobby every other day. The spelling was not above reproach, but the sentiments must have been most satisfactory, for on receipt Bobby’s eyes softened marvellously, and he was wont to fall into a tender abstraction for a while ere, shaking his cropped head, he charged into his work.

By what power he drew after him the hearts of the roughest, and the Tail Twisters counted in their ranks some rough diamonds indeed, was a mystery to both skipper and C. O., who learned from the regimental chaplain that Bobby was considerably more in request in the hospital tents than the Reverend John Emery.

“The men seem fond of you. Are you in the hospitals much?” said the Colonel, who did his daily round and ordered the men to get well with a hardness that did not cover his bitter grief.

“A little, sir,” said Bobby.

“Shouldn’t go there too often if I were you. They say it’s not contagious, but there’s no use in running unnecessary risks. We can’t afford to have you down, y’ know.”

Six days later, it was with the utmost difficulty that the post-runner plashed his way out to the camp with the mail-bags, for the rain was falling in torrents. Bobby received a letter, bore it off to his tent, and, the programme for the next week’s Sing-song being satisfactorily disposed of, sat down to answer it. For an hour the unhandy pen toiled over the paper, and where sentiment rose to more than normal tide-level, Bobby Wick stuck out his tongue and breathed heavily. He was not used to letter-writing.

“Beg y’ pardon, sir,” said a voice at the tent door; “but Dormer’s ‘orrid bad, sir, an’ they’ve taken him orf, sir.”

“Damn Private Dormer and you too!” said Bobby Wick, running the blotter over the half-finished letter. “Tell him I’ll come in the morning.”

“‘E’s awful bad, sir,” said the voice hesitatingly. There was an undecided squelching of heavy boots.

“Well?” said Bobby impatiently.

“Excusin’ ‘imself before ‘and for takin’ the liberty, ‘e says it would be a comfort for to assist ‘im, sir, if — tattoo lao! Get my pony! Here, come in out of the rain till I’mready. What blasted nuisances you are! That’s brandy. Drink some; you want it. Hang on to my stirrup and tell me if I go too fast.”

Strengthened by a four-finger “nip” which he swallowed without a wink, the Hospital Orderly kept up with the slipping, mud-stained, and very disgusted pony as it shambled to the hospital tent.

Private Dormer was certainly “‘orrid bad.” He had all but reached the stage of collapse, and was not pleasant to look upon.

“What’s this, Dormer?” said Bobby, bending over the man. “You’re not going out this time. You’ve got to come fishing with me once or twice more yet.”

The blue lips parted and in the ghost of a whisper said, — “Beg y’ pardon, sir, disturbin’ of you now, but would you min’ ‘oldin’ my ‘and, sir’?”

Bobby sat on the side of the bed, and the icy-cold hand closed on his own like a vice, forcing a lady’s ring which was on the little finger deep into the flesh. Bobby set his lips and waited, the water dripping from the hem of his trousers. An hour passed, and the grasp of the hand did not relax, nor did the expression of the drawn face change. Bobby with infinite craft lit himself a cheroot with the left hand (his right arm was numbed to the elbow), and resigned himself to a night of pain.

Dawn showed a very white-faced Subaltern sitting on the side of a sick man’s cot, and a Doctor in the doorway using language unfit for publication.

“Have you been here all night, you young ass?” said the Doctor.

“There or thereabouts,” said Bobby ruefully. “He’s frozen on to me.”

Dormer’s mouth shut with a click. He turned his head and sighed. The clinging hand opened, and Bobby’s arm fell useless at his side.

“He’ll do,” said the Doctor quietly. “It must have been a toss-up all through the night. ‘Think you’re to be congratulated on this case.”

“Oh, bosh!” said Bobby. “I thought the man had gone out long ago — only — only I didn’t care to take my hand away. Rub my arm down, there’s a good chap. What a grip the brute has! I’m chilled to the marrow!” He passed out of the tent shivering.

Private Dormer was allowed to celebrate his repulse of Death by strong waters. Four days later, he sat on the side of his cot and said to the patients mildly: “I’d ‘a’ liken to ‘a’ spoken to ‘im — so I should.”

But at that time Bobby was reading yet another letter, — he had the most persistent correspondent of any man in camp, — and was even then about to write that the sickness had abated, and in another week at the outside would be gone. He did not intend to say that the chill of a sick man’s hand seemed to have struck into the heart whose capacities for affection he dwelt on at such length. He did intend to enclose the illustrated programme of the forthcoming Sing-song, whereof he was not a little proud. He also intended to write on many other matters which do not concern us, and doubtless would have done so but for the slight feverish headache which made him dull and unresponsive at mess.

“You are overdoing it, Bobby,” said his skipper. “‘Might give the rest of us credit of doing a little work. You go on as if you were the whole Mess rolled into one. Take it easy.”

“I will,” said Bobby. “I’m feeling done up, somehow.” Revere looked at him anxiously and said nothing.

There was a flickering of lanterns about the camp that night, and a rumour that brought men out of their cots to the tent doors, a paddling of the naked feet of doolie-bearers, and the rush of a galloping horse.

“Wot’s up?” asked twenty tents; and through twenty tents ran the answer — “Wick, ‘e’s down.”

They brought the news to Revere and he groaned. “Any one but Bobby and I shouldn’t have cared! The Sergeant-Major was right.”

“Not going out this journey,” gasped Bobby, as he was lifted from the doolie. “Not going out this journey.” Then with an air of supreme conviction — “I can’t, you see.”

“Not if I can do anything!” said the Surgeon-Major, who had hastened over from the mess where he had been dining.

He and the Regimental Surgeon fought together with Death for the life of Bobby Wick. Their work was interrupted by a hairy apparition in a blue-gray dressing-gown, who stared in horror at the bed and cried — “Oh, my Gawd! It can’t be ‘im!” until an indignant Hospital Orderly whisked him away.

If care of man and desire to live could have done aught, Bobby would have been saved. As it was, he made a fight of three days, and the Surgeon-Major’s brow uncreased. “We’ll save him yet,” he said; and the Surgeon, who, though he ranked with the Captain, had a very youthful heart, went out upon the word and pranced joyously in the mud.

“Not going out this journey,” whispered Bobby Wick gallantly, at the end of the third day.

“Bravo!” said the Surgeon-Major. “That’s the way to look at it, Bobby.”

As evening fell a gray shade gathered round Bobby’s mouth, and he turned his face to the tent-wall wearily. The Surgeon-Major frowned.

“I’m awfully tired,” said Bobby, very faintly. “What’s the use of bothering me with medicine? I — don’t — want — it. Let me alone.”

The desire for life had departed, and Bobby was content to drift away on the easy tide of Death.

“It’s no good,” said the Surgeon-Major. “He doesn’t want to live. He’s meeting it, poor child.” And he blew his nose.

Half a mile away, the regimental band was playing the overture to the Sing-song, for the men had been told that Bobby was out of danger. The clash of the brass and the wail of the horns reached Bobby’s ears.

     Is there a single joy or pain,      That I should never kno-ow?      You do not love me, ‘tis in vain,      Bid me good-bye and go!

An expression of hopeless irritation crossed the boy’s face, and he tried to shake his head.

The Surgeon-Major bent down — “What is it, Bobby?” — “Not that waltz,” muttered Bobby. “That’s our own — our very ownest own... Mummy dear.”

With this he sank into the stupor that gave place to death early next morning.

Revere, his eyes red at the rims and his nose very white, went into Bobby’s tent to write a letter to Papa Wick which should bow the white head of the ex-Commissioner of Chota-Buldana in the keenest sorrow of his life. Bobby’s little store of papers lay in confusion on the table, and among them a half-finished letter. The last sentence ran: “So you see, darling, there is really no fear, because as long as I know you care for me and I care for you, nothing can touch me.”

Revere stayed in the tent for an hour. When he came out, his eyes were redder than ever.

Private Conklin sat on a turned-down bucket, and listened to a not unfamiliar tune. Private Conklin was a convalescent and should have been tenderly treated.

“Ho!” said Private Conklin. “There’s another bloomin’ orf’cer da-ed.”

The bucket shot from under him, and his eyes filled with a smithyful of sparks. A tall man in a blue-gray bedgown was regarding him with deep disfavour.

“You ought to take shame for yourself, Conky! Orf’cer? — bloomin’ orf’cer? I’ll learn you to misname the likes of ‘im. Hangel! Bloomin’ Hangel! That’s wot ‘e is!”

And the Hospital Orderly was so satisfied with the justice of the punishment that he did not even order Private Dormer back to his cot.

IN THE MATTER OF A PRIVATE

Hurrah! hurrah! a soldier’s life for me! Shout, boys, shout! for it makes you jolly and free. The Ramrod Corps.

People who have seen say that one of the quaintest spectacles of human frailty is an outbreak of hysterics in a girls’ school. It starts without warning, generally on a hot afternoon, among the elder pupils. A girl giggles till the giggle gets beyond control. Then she throws up her head and cries, “Honk, honk, honk,” like a wild goose, and tears mix with the laughter. If the mistress be wise, she will rap out something severe at this point to check matters. If she be tender-hearted, and send for a drink of water, the chances are largely in favour of another girl laughing at the afflicted one and herself collapsing. Thus the trouble spreads, and may end in half of what answers to the Lower Sixth of a boys’ school rocking and whooping together. Given a week of warm weather, two stately promenades per diem, a heavy mutton and rice meal in the middle of the day, a certain amount of nagging from the teachers, and a few other things, some amazing effects develop. At least, this is what folk say who have had experience.

Now, the Mother Superior of a Convent and the Colonel of a British Infantry Regiment would be justly shocked at any comparison being made between their respective charges. But it is a fact that, under certain circumstances, Thomas in bulk can be worked up into ditthering, rippling hysteria. He does not weep, but he shows his trouble unmistakably, and the consequences get into the newspapers, and all the good people who hardly know a Martini from a Snider say: “Take away the brute’s ammunition!”

Thomas isn’t a brute, and his business, which is to look after the virtuous people, demands that he shall have his ammunition to his hand. He doesn’t wear silk stockings, and he really ought to be supplied with a new Adjective to help him to express his opinions: but, for all that, he is a great man. If you call him “the heroic defender of the national honour” one day, and “a brutal and licentious soldiery” the next, you naturally bewilder him, and he looks upon you with suspicion. There is nobody to speak for Thomas except people who have theories to work off on him, and nobody understands Thomas except Thomas, and he does not always know what is the matter with himself.

That is the prologue. This is the story: —

Corporal Slane was engaged to be married to Miss Jhansi M’Kenna, whose history is well known in the regiment and elsewhere. He had his Colonel’s permission, and, being popular with the men, every arrangement had been made to give the wedding what Private Ortheris called “eeklar.” It fell in the heart of the hot weather, and, after the wedding, Slane was going up to the Hills with the bride. None the less, Slane’s grievance was that the affair would be only a hired-carriage wedding, and he felt that the “eeklar” of that was meagre. Miss M’Kenna did not care so much. The Sergeant’s wife was helping her to make her wedding-dress, and she was very busy. Slane was, just then, the only moderately contented man in barracks. All the rest were more or less miserable.

And they had so much to make them happy, too. All their work was over at eight in the morning, and for the rest of the day they could lie on their backs and smoke Canteen-plug and swear at the punkah-coolies. They enjoyed a fine, full flesh meal in the middle of the day, and then threw themselves down on their cots and sweated and slept till it was cool enough to go out with their “towny,” whose vocabulary contained less than six hundred words, and the Adjective, and whose views on every conceivable question they had heard many times before.

There was the Canteen, of course, and there was the Temperance Room with the second-hand papers in it; but a man of any profession cannot read for eight hours a day in a temperature of 96 deg. or 98 deg. in the shade, running up sometimes to 103 deg. at midnight. Very few men, even though they get a pannikin of flat, stale, muddy beer and hide it under their cots, can continue drinking for six hours a day. One man tried, but he died, and nearly the whole regiment went to his funeral because it gave them something to do. It was too early for the excitement of fever or cholera. The men could only wait and wait and wait, and watch the shadow of the barrack creeping across the blinding white dust. That was a gay life.