Part 43

“Hooroo, Jude!” said Mrs. Geogehagan, with graceful brevity, rising up to the full extent of her six feet odd of stature, setting her vast elbows akimbo, and surveying the scared intruder with the eye that did not squint while the other swiveled round to make sure that her cookery was not burning. “Will any gintleman or lady presint condescind,” she pursued in a tone of raking irony, “to be afther inthrojuicing me to the bit av’ gintility that’s dhropped in to pay us a marning call?”

“With your good leave, ma’am,” put in Josh, with a more submissive tone and less confident air than Nelly would have ever expected of him, “this is my young wife, who--as I’ve explained to you already--has had the good fortune to be entered on the Regiment’s Married Roll, after nigh on two years of delay. And I take the liberty, among comrades, to hope she’s not unwelcome to any here present?--knowing of no reason why she should be!”

* * * * *

He looked about him, and there was an assenting murmur, and the seated men got up to shake hands, and the women, after a moment’s hesitation, did the same. All save one, more tawdrily dressed than her companions, and with a great many light yellow curls, who kept her face turned persistently away.

“Gi’ me your hand, Mrs. Horrotian, ma’am!” said Mrs. Geogehagan, advancing with great ceremony and stateliness. She added, as Nelly complied--in a soaring shriek that made Mrs. Joshua jump and flush nervously:

“Jems!”

“Is it me you’re wantin’, Moggy?” said bland James Geogehagan.

“It is!” said Mrs. Geogehagan severely, “an’ the Divil mend your manners. Rare up on the ould hind legs av’ you, and bid this dacent young wife av’ Horrotian’s welcome to the Rooms.” She added, as the Corporal complied: “For we may bless ourselves there’s men in the Rigiment that has more dacincy than to stand up for-ninst the clargyman or the priest wid a wagtail av’ the gutther! I say ut in the brazen face that’s lookin’ at me now!”

There was no mistake about the face that confronted the indomitable Mrs. Geogehagan, ambushed in a forest of egregiously-curled light ringlets, with blazing eyes set in it, and flying the scarlet flag of battle in cheeks that wore the brownish stains of ingrained rouge. Nelly’s hazel glance went to it timidly; and then--even if the pink bonnet--sadly the worse for wear--had not hung on a peg driven into the whitewashed wall behind, she would have recognized it with the same sinking of her heart. For it belonged to the flaunting woman who had accosted Josh upon that unforgettable evening at the theater; the patchouli-reeking, gin-perfumed creature who had thrust a red, ringed hand under the trooper’s stiff, reluctant elbow, and had called him ducky, had asked him to stand drink.... Oh! how glad was Mrs. Joshua that hand had not been offered like the rest!... Never could she have demeaned herself to touch it, not for diamonds and gold....

Meanwhile it had been dawning in the slow brain of the tall, thin, pimply young trooper who had been Pink Bonnet’s companion upon that memorable night, and was now sitting affectionately in her pocket, that the utterances of Mrs. Geogehagan were leveled at his wife. He had applied for permission to marry, and the inquiries of the Commanding Officer had been satisfactorily answered. There were persons who made quite a capital living--in those days as in these--out of whitewashing the feathers of the grimiest of soiled garrison doves.

You saw Trooper Toomey, yellow in the face and scowling, lumbering up at the nudge of an imperative elbow, from the form he had bestridden, with the air of a man nerving himself for a fight.

“Look a’ here, I’m blasted if I’ll stand this!”--he was beginning, when Mrs. Geogehagan cut him short.

“Toomey, me fine man,” she said almost mellifluously, “av ye show them dirty teeth av yours at me, ’tis taking lave of your mouth they’ll be with the dhrive in the gub I’ll land you,--so shut ut--an’ sit ye down!”

Thus cautioned, Toomey snapped his lank jaws together, threw his long leg across the form, and sat down sullenly, leaving Pink Bonnet to enter the arena alone.

In high, shrill accents she demanded to be informed without reserve whether she, the speaker, was or was not the lawful married wife of a low-bred white-livered ’ound what was afeared of standing up for her against them that for all their back-talk and sauce--was nothing but Irish Scum--and would, if all was knowed that might be knowed!--be held unworthy to sweep up the dust of her feet, or to eat off of the same table with her!...

“Hooroo, Jude!--an’ is that the talk you have?” retorted Mrs. Geogehagan, with overwhelming irony. “Married you are, bedad!--an’ proud av it as a mangy bitch wid a new tin collar. As for Toomey there!--sure, pay-cocks wid their tails spread is less consayted, I’ll go bail!” She broke off as the Dinner Call sounded; plunged at the hanging tray above the long table, and began--as did several of the other women--to rattle down the plates and basins, crockery mugs and wooden-handled knives, in an orderly jumble upon the upper end of the board, while the sulky Toomey, seizing upon two very large, very bright, and very deep tin dishes, and hanging a tin pail over his arm, hurried out to the cook-house to get the mess for the Room. And in his absence, such men as had been taking it easy without their belts, coats and stocks, put them on again, and the women tidied their hair.

* * * * *

You subsequently beheld Mrs. Geogehagan in her glory, serving broth, boiled meat, cabbage and potatoes, in strictly equal helpings, into the various bowls and platters assembled on the board. This onerous task being completed to the general satisfaction, the men chose their portions first, and were succeeded--according to the husband’s seniority of rank--by their wives. Then Mrs. Geogehagan, standing beside her Jems in front of the short form that stood at the upper end of the table--pronounced a pithy grace, which ran--unless my memory trips--something after this fashion:

“May Christ and the Four Evangels bless this mate!... Bad scran to that villain av’ a throop-cook! Sure, the praties is burraned agin!”

LXXI

The door was thrown open by an Orderly Sergeant during the progress of this, Mrs. Joshua’s first meal in Barracks, and a gruff bellow of “Attention!” caused a cessation of the clashing of knives, and a general uprising about the table heralded the entrance of the Officer for the Day. He was a blushing subaltern, fair-haired and nicely-mannered, who said a pleasant word of welcome to Mrs. Joshua, and, being preceded out of the room by the Sergeant, earned a favorable comment from Mrs. Geogehagan by not forgetting to shut the door.

After dinner the men adjourned to the Canteen for malt liquor, and the women strolled out, or gossiped among themselves. Tea-time meant for nearly all of them a snack of bread and cheese, washed down with beer--the fragrant leaf being eight shillings a pound in those days. Yet Moggy Geogehagan never failed to dhraw a raking pot upon the fire-cheek. She would as soon go without duds, she proclaimed, as widout her dhrop av’ tay. To porther, consumed in the pewter pots with a cauliflower head on, Moggy was, as was her Jems, exceedingly addicted. Sometimes under the influence of the beverage the worthy couple quarreled. And upon these occasions--probably feeling the need of maintaining herself in an upright position--the Corporal’s huge helpmeet would ask him for the loan of his ear.

Helping to undress, wash and tuck the children into their truckle beds, and washing-basket cradles, gave the young wife quite a homelike feeling. It was at Roll-Call--when every trooper not on duty stood to his bed and answered to his name--that the cheeks of Sarah’s ex-dairymaid began to tingle and burn.

She had screened off her bed and her husband’s with an old curtain and her shabbiest shawl, by the aid of clothes-line and corking-pins, nails and hammer.... Now, when the Sergeant had followed the officer out, and Josh--having been warned for First Relief of the Guard--had hurried on his greatcoat, belt, and pouches,--taken his lance, sword, sling-carbine, plumed cap and gloves from the iron shelf and the hooks in the wall immediately above the bed-head,--stuffed a hunk of bread into his pocket, kissed her and jingled out with another man detailed for duty--it dawned on Nelly--silent in the midst of all these women and their men--who laughed, quarreled, kissed, sang or cursed freely and unrestrainedly, and without the slightest regard for the convenience of their neighbors or the feelings of the diffident stranger--that she and Josh had got to go to bed to-night, and every night for years to come, in the midst of this deafening din; under all these curious, or indifferent or evil eyes....

You are to imagine the two great foul-smelling tubs brought in--and the imperative trumpet-call “Lights out!” turning the perpendicular crowd into a horizontal one--the smelly, noisy gaslit hell--for it seemed nothing less to Nelly--into another of stifled laughter and whispered words ... of blackness, and stench, and worse.... You may suppose the homely domestic Virtues ranged side by side with the fouler vices on the huckaback-sheeted, brown-blanketed, straw-stuffed palliasses. Be a little sorry for the country girl, accustomed to retire at curfew--rung even to this day in remote English villages--with her flat candle-stick to her clean and quiet chamber over the great farm kitchen; and sleep in lavender-smelling linen, lulled by the rush of the Drowse under its three bridge-arches, unawakened by the crying of the hunting owls as they moused along the rick-eaves and raided the sparrows’ nests....

* * * * *

The great tubs were not the only things that reeked in the long, stuffy, vile-smelling room. Things were said that scalded the ears of the young wife, things were done of which she had never dreamed....

If she had had her man’s strong arm about her, she would have hidden her face in his breast, and, with his hard hand covering her little ears, have sobbed herself to sleep. But she was alone--in a void of dreadful darkness, populous with goblins hideous and grim.... Realizing this, and being well advanced upon the road that ends in a full cradle or empty arms, an hysterical access seized the poor young thing.

Her sobs, her cries and writhings--for strange, sharp, piercing pangs began to be added to the mere mental tortures--at length attracted the attention of those who waked, and roused those who snored.... Iron bedsteads creaked, relieved of heavy bodies--a candle-end flared in a lantern at the Corporal’s end of the room.... The stalwart figure of Moggy Geogehagan, arrayed in an ancient watch-coat, with her head tied up in a red-spotted handkerchief, and a blue yarn stocking tied round her neck--a certain cure for cowlds!--was illuminated by the candle’s yellow flicker, demanding to be inforrumed av the rayson av the outrajis hullaballoo?

Receiving no reply, the indomitable Moggy strode to the quarter whence the crying came. You saw her lift the hanging shawl and disappear behind its meager screen. From within her voice proceeded, pitched in a key less raucous than was usual:

“’Tis her Woman’s Hour that has come too soon upon the poor young crayture!... Let a brace av dacent women that are mothers, come quickly widin to me here!”

Ah! they were no longer troll-wives, grim female goblins of a strange nocturnal underworld! With one touch of the magic wand of Sympathy, brandished in her big red fist, did Moggy Geogehagan transform them into beings of warm human flesh and blood.

They left their beds and gathered round the flimsy tent of shawl and counterpane that housed the timid sufferer. Brawny women and scrawny women, little women and big women; women half-naked and not at all ashamed; women who habitually retired to rest as fully clothed as any Boer’s _vrouw_. Pity and Compassion, hidden in these rough natures as silver in lead, or gold in quartz, or the ruby in its rough brown matrix of corundum, came shining to the light. The sheep with the goats, the “dacent” with the disreputable--they vied with each other in doing what they could. Even Pink Bonnet rose to the emergency, vindicating her oft-vociferated claim to be a woman, after all....

* * * * *

There was a gaunt bare whitewashed room with a rusty stove and a double row of moldy pallets in it, that was termed--with irony none the less grim because unconscious--the Barrack Hospital. No place was set apart where the soldier’s wife might be tended in sickness, or bring forth her babe in peace; but thanks to Moggy Geogehagan and the two dacent women, and the rest that made a living wall of themselves between the poor young mother and the strange male eyes she dreaded so--the pale, rainy dawn that climbed over the high spiked walls of Spurham Cavalry Barracks, brought with it a new young life.

Thus Joshua Horrotian, coming back, yawning and shivering, at the expiration of his allotted term of hours On Guard, was met upon the threshold of the troop-room by the lady of the villa near the fireplace, big with news that made him stare.

“’Tis a grand boy, God bless it!--though he kem before he was joo, bedad!” trumpeted Mrs. Geogehagan, opening a chink in the clean, but yellowed flannel petticoat that had something that squirmed inside....

“And God bless you for a good woman, Mrs. Geogehagan!” stammered Joshua Horrotian. He added: “But oh! my poor girl! To ha’ gone through her trial under the eyes of a crowd o’ strangers, was cruel hard on her!”

“Hutt!” said Moggy scornfully, hushing and rocking the baby. “’Tis as well to get used to the worrust at firrust. What’s natheral can’t be desprit,” she added, quoting a favorite proverb of her land. “And she has sinse, and pith in her, begob she has! ‘Scrame out!’ I sez to her in the nick of the danger--‘if ye’d ever rise from that bed, scrame out, and not in!’ And scrame she did till the hearers blessed themselves. Pass me your arrums to rack, an’ take the child!”

But Josh, looking dubiously at the sleeve of his great-coat, whereon the lice of the guardroom crawled, hesitated to obey....

“Phyaugh!” said Moggy, with a toss of the head--adorned with the red-spotted handkerchief--that brought a quantity of coarse black hair, mightily resembling the tail of her husband’s charger--tumbling down her back. “What matter for the like av thim ginthry! All the _weeneen_ asks is an honust man for his dadda, and a dacent young crayther for his mammy--such as her widin there,”--she jerked her head towards the distant end of the troop-room--“wid a breast av milk to bate the Queen’s” (who was popularly understood just then to be rearing a royal bantling after the natural method). “Hould out your han’s, I bid ye,” commanded the golden woman, “and take and bless your son!”

Joshua obeyed, for she would have cried herrings upon him in another minute.... And as he took the squirming bundle, he sniffed, and something splashed upon the yellow flannel petticoat. But Moggy had turned her back on him, and was racking the arms away.

LXXII

At St. Paul’s Cathedral, beside the glorious bones of England’s elder idol, the Admiral of the empty eye-socket and the vacant sleeve, the grand old white head of England’s soldier-hero was laid to rest. The Army was Chief Mourner, the Nation followed him to the tomb. Britons had heartily hated him as Minister--as military leader they adored him. Nothing was remembered in that parting hour but what they owed to him. His funeral wreaths were hardly withered when,--with some noise of cheering from the Officers’ Mess at lunch-time, echoed from the Sergeants’--who were having dinner--caught up by a squad dismissed from drill, and vociferously joined in by heads that were thrust from troop-room windows, it was made known at the Barracks of the Hundredth Lancers that the gentleman who had got himself elected President of the French a year or so previously, had now proclaimed himself Emperor of that nation. Upon the subject Mrs. Geogehagan was as bitterly sarcastic as Mrs. Geogehagan alone could be.

“Hooroo, Jude!” said she. “Cook him up wid a crown on! Sure there will be no houldin’ him now--such will be the proide and consayt av the cobbler’s dog!”

“And will it do us any good--the gentleman’s being made an Emperor?” asked Mrs. Joshua Horrotian, who was sitting on her bed, nursing the infant Sarah, while little Josh, now a sturdy red-haired toddler of two years old, was dragging a headless wooden horse about the well-scrubbed floor.

“Why, none as I can think on,” somewhat moodily returned Mrs. Joshua Horrotian’s husband, who sat upon a bench not far off, engaged in doing what he would have technically termed “a bit of sogering”--represented in the polishing of divers chain-straps, buttons, badges, and belt-buckles to the brightest point of brilliancy attainable by the use of scraps of “shammy” and whitened rag.

“Unless,” he added, “being well-disposed towards our country and our people, he med-be were to ask us to go snacks with ’n in a European War. With the Pruskis or th’ Ruskis--that be showin’ their teeth just now at the Turkeys--there baint much to choose between Foreigners anyway,” said Joshua oracularly. “Not but what,” he continued, with an afterthought, “they French Frogs be foreigners, too. And us have fought ’em in the Duke’s day--and learned ’em the taste of a beating. ’Twould be oddish, now I come to think of it,” said the trooper musingly, “for we to take ’em for Allies at this time o’ day! And howsomever friendly this new Emperor may call hisself, there baint no gettin’ away from the truth of his being the nephew o’ the man as we boxed up in St. Helena--and his being, by reason o’ that, a poor, out-at-elbows, shabby kind o’ beggar--till his luck took the turn. ’Taint in Nature to suppose he’s as uncommon fond of us as he makes out. I’m dodgasted,” said Josh, employing the Sloughshire imprecation, “if I should be in his place! What be ye thinking of, my Pretty?”

For Nelly was looking at him across the baby, with a dubious wrinkle between her hazel eyes.

“Could I love ’e, I do wonder,” she breathed in the ear he leaned to her, “supposing you’d went and killed a live man!”

“It wouldn’t be a man, Pretty--it would be an enemy!” explained the trooper in all sober faith.

“But a man for all--of live flesh and blood!” Her sweet underlip turned downwards like a grieved child’s. The trooper said, after a slight reflective pause:

“Why, dash my button-stick! I never thought of the beggar in that light. Howsomever, the chances are that th’ boot might be on t’other leg--as far as the killing went. Halloa! Why, what’s this for?”

He had been leaning forwards, looking at the baby, and his handsome head was very near the bosom whence it drank. So, pierced by the stab of that light careless reference to the grim chances of War, Nelly had thrown her strong young arm about her husband’s neck, and snatched him to her, panting:

“Oh, if he ever dared!... The wicked--wicked----”

Mrs. Geogehagan, squatting on her own bed mending her Corporal’s overalls, cried herrings in reprobation:

“Wickud, is ut? Sure, and wouldn’t his wife--whoever she was, poor craythur!--an’ whatever outlandish, quare kind av lingo she might use to spake her mind in, be afther havin’ an aiqual right to say the same av your man?”

Mrs. Geogehagan went on to say that Active Service, meanin’ liberal Bounties, and more Pay, and the chances of Promotion, the jooty of every raal soldier’s wife was to lep out av her skin wid joy at the wind av the worrud av a War.

The intelligence being shortly afterwards conveyed to Moggy that “ould Boney’s nevey” was seeking a consort among the marriageable daughters of European Reigning Sovereigns, she cried more herrings on the outrajis impidence of the man.

“A mane little jumped-up spigareethahaun!... Offerin’ himself to ivery King’s daughter in Creation before the sate of his throne is warrum!... Begob! we’d have him axing Queen Victoria herself to stan’ up before the priest wid him--supposing herself wasn’t suited wid a betther man!”

His Imperial Majesty’s repeated failures to secure a suitable alliance caused Moggy exquisite gratification. She relented towards him a little upon his officially-announced determination to follow the dictates of his heart, and tread the flower-strewn path of connubial happiness, indicated by the implacable hunting-whip of Mademoiselle de Montijo. Public Securities went down two francs; Court jewelers, dressmakers, tailors, modistes and florists, wine-merchants and confectioners, danced like happy motes in the golden rays of Imperial Patronage; and Marquises, Dukes, and Counts of Napoleon I.’s creation--who had crept out of dark forgotten corners when the Empire came in again--cleaned the dust off their forelegs, and spread their crumpled wings, and buzzed like joyous bluebottles about the tables being spread for the Wedding Banquet. Most of the nobles of the defunct Monarchy danced to the tune Monsiegneur played them. But the ancient Duchesse de Viellecourt and the venerable Marquis de l’Autretemps, and the younger scions of the Old Régime--these would not shake a leg for him, however he might pipe.

But Paris was very gay indeed, blazing with new uniforms and newer bonnets,--bristling with lances, bayonets, and expectation.... The bustle and clamor were prodigious, the rattle of drums and the blare of trumpets, the squealing of feminine sightseers crushed in the crowd--the cursing of male citizens whose toes had been pounded by rifle-butts, made thick the air. Swarms of foreigners, avid to behold the pageant, filled the hotels and boarding-houses to bursting--you may imagine the accent of Albion predominant in the salad of mingled pronunciations--you may suppose the gold of the Briton clanking royally into the Gaul’s trouser-pockets and tills.

Upon the carriage of the Imperial _cortége_,-- (each drawn by six white horses) the arms of the Bourbons had been effaced in favor of the Imperial Crown. Over which the golden letters “N” and “E” had been tastefully emblazoned on a chaste cerulean blue background.... _The_ carriage was drawn by eight prancing steeds, adorned with nodding plumes. And its domed roof was topped with an Imperial Crown of dimensions that caused the vehicle to sway and to wobble; so that the Eagle perching at each corner, and the Loves and Graces painted on its panels of mother-o’-pearl and golden lacquer, shuddered as though palsied with ceremonial stage-fright.

Sixteen colossal gilt eagles perched on the hoary towers of Notre Dame, brooding with outspread wings of blessing over the nuptial solemnities. Everything that could be draped, was draped with green velvet powdered with golden bees. The nave was carpeted with green. The Canopy above the Imperial Throne, and the Matrimonial Chair upon the dais (covered with a white carpet spotted with black, to represent ermine)--was of crimson velvet, bee-besprinkled. Above the Canopy was another Imperial Crown, on which sat another eagle--apparently of solid gold.