Chapter 8

Slowly the days roll on with anxious expectancy, the coming event forming the one engrossing topic of conversation alike in barrack-room, in stable, in canteen, and in guard-room. The clever hands of the troop are deep in devising a series of ornamentations for the walls and roof of the common habitation. One fellow spends all his spare time on the top of a table with a bed on top of that again, embellishing the wall above the fireplace with a florid design in a variety of colours meant to be an exact copy of the device on the regiment's kettledrums, with the addition of the legend, "A Merry Christmas to the old Straw-boots," inscribed on a waving scroll below. The skill of another decorator is directed to the clipping of sundry squares of coloured paper into wondrous forms--Prince of Wales's feathers, gorgeous festoons, and the like--with which the gas pendants and the edges of the window-frames are disguised out of their original nakedness and hardness of outline, so as to be almost unrecognisable by the eye of the matter-of-fact barrack-master himself. What is this felonious-looking band up to--these four determined rascals in the forbidden high-lows and stable overalls who go slinking mysteriously out at the back gate just at the gloaming? Are they Fenian sympathisers bound for a secret meeting, or are they deserters making off just at the time when there is the least likelihood of suspicion? Nay, they are neither; but, nevertheless, their errand is a nefarious one. Watch at the gate for an hour and you will see them come back again each man laden with the spoils of the shrubberies--holly, mistletoe, and evergreens--ruthlessly plundered under cover of the darkness. A couple of days before "the day," the sergeant-major enters the barrack-room, a smile playing upon his rubicund features. We all know what his errand is and he knows right well that we do; but he cannot refrain from the customary short patronising harangue, "Our worthy captain--liberal gent you know--deputed me--what you like for dinner--plum-puddings, of course--a quart of beer a man; make up your minds what you'll have--anything but game and venison;" and so he vanishes grinning a saturnine grin. The moment is a critical one. We ought to be unanimous. What shall we have? A council of deliberation is constituted on the spot and proceeds to the discussion of the weighty question. The suggestions are not numerous. The alternative lies between pork and goose. The old soldiers, for some inscrutable reason, go for goose to a man. The recruits have a carnal craving after the flesh of the pig. I did once hear a "carpet-bag" recruit[1] hesitatingly broach the idea of mutton, but he collapsed ignominiously under the concentrated stare of righteous indignation with which his heterodox suggestion was received. Goose versus pork is eagerly debated. As regards quantity the question is a level one, since the allowance from time immemorial has been a goose or a leg of pork among three men.

[Footnote 1: "Carpet-bag" recruit is the barrack-room appellation of contempt for the young gentleman recruit who joins his regiment _omnibus impedimentis_--who, in fact, brings his baggage with him, to find it, of course, utterly useless.]

At length the point is decided during the evening stable-hour, according as old or young soldiers predominate in the room. The sergeant-major is informed of the conclusion arrived at, and in the evening the corporal of each room accompanies him on a marketing expedition into the town. Another important duty devolves upon the said corporal in the course of this marketing tour. The "dimmocking bags" have been emptied; the accumulations in the sergeant-major's hands have been drawn, and the corporal, freighted with the joint savings, has the task of expending the same in beer. In this undertaking he manifests a preternatural astuteness. He is not to be inveigled into giving his order at a public-house,--swipes from the canteen would do as well as that,--nor do the bottled-beer merchants tempt him with their high prices for dubious quality. No, he goes direct to the fountain-head. If there be a brewery in the place he finds it out and bestows his order upon it, thus triumphantly securing the pure article at the wholesale price. His purchasing calculation is upon the basis of two gallons per man. If, as is generally the case, the barrack-room he represents contains twelve men, he orders a twenty-four gallon barrel of porter--always porter; and if he has a surplus left he disburses it in the purchase of a bottle or two of spirits, for the behoof of any fair visitors who may haply honour the barrack-room with their presence.

It is Christmas Eve. The evening stable-hour is over and all hands are merrily engaged in the composition of the puddings; some stoning fruit, others chopping suet, beating eggs, and so forth. The barrel of beer is in the corner but it is sacred as the honour of the regiment! Nothing would induce the expectant participants in its contents to broach it before its appointed time shall come. So there is beer instead from the canteen in the tin pails of the barrack-room, and the work of pudding-compounding goes on jovially to the accompaniments of song and jest. Now, there is a fear lest too many fingers in the pudding may spoil it--lest a multitude of counsellors as to the proportions of ingredients and the process of mixing may be productive of the reverse of safety. But somehow a man with a specialty is always forthcoming, and that specialty is pudding-making. Most likely he has been the butt of the room--a quiet, quaint, retiring, awkward fellow who seemed as if he never could do anything right. But he has lit upon his vocation at last--he is a born pudding-maker. He rises with the occasion, and the sheepish "gaby" becomes the knowing practical man; his is now the voice of authority, and his comrades recant on the spot, acknowledge his superiority without a murmur, and perform "ko-tow" before the once despised man of undeveloped abilities. They pull out their clean towels with alacrity in response to his demand for pudding-cloths; they run to the canteen enthusiastically for a further supply on a hint from him that there is a deficiency in the ingredient of allspice. And then he artistically gathers together the corners of the cloths and ties up the puddings tightly and securely; whereupon a procession is formed to escort them into the cook-house, and there, having consigned them into the depths of the mighty copper, the "man of the time" remains watching the caldron bubble until morning, a great jorum of beer at his elbow the ready contribution of his now appreciative comrades.

The hours roll on; and at length out into the darkness of the barrack-square stalks the trumpeter on duty, and the shrill notes of the _réveille_ echo through the stillness of the yet dark night. On an ordinary morning the _réveille_ is practically negatived, and nobody thinks of stirring from between the blankets till the "warning" sounds quarter of an hour before the morning stable-time. But on this morning there is no slothful skulking in the arms of Morpheus. Every one jumps up, as if galvanised, at the first note of the _réveille_. For the fulfilment of a time-honoured custom is looked forward to--a remnant of the old days when the "women" lived in the corner of the barrack-room. The soldier's wife who has the cleaning of the room and who does the washing of its inmates--for which services each man pays her a penny a day, has from time immemorial taken upon herself the duty of bestowing a "morning" on the Christmas anniversary upon the men she "does for." Accordingly, about a quarter to six, she enters the room--a hard-featured, rough-voiced dame, perhaps, with a fist like a shoulder of mutton, but a soldier herself to the very core and with a big, tender heart somewhere about her. She carries a bottle of whisky--it is always whisky, somehow--in one hand and a glass in the other; and, beginning with the oldest soldier administers a calker to every one in the room till she comes to the "cruity," upon whom, if he be a pullet-faced, homesick, bit of a lad, she may bestow a maternal salute in addition, with the advice to consider the regiment as his mother now, and be a smart soldier and a good lad.

Breakfast is not an institution in any great acceptation in a cavalry regiment on Christmas morning. When the stable-hour is over a great many of the troopers do not immediately reappear in the barrack-room. Indeed they do not turn up until long after the coffee is cold; and, when they do return there is a certain something about them which, to the experienced observer, demonstrates the fact that, if they have been thirsty, they have not been quenching their drought at the pump. It is a standing puzzle to the uninitiated where the soldier in barracks contrives to obtain drink of a morning. The canteen is rigorously closed. No one is allowed to go out of barracks and no drink is allowed to come in. A teetotallers' meeting-hall could not appear more rigidly devoid of opportunities for indulgence than does a barrack during the morning. Yet I will venture to say, if you go into any barrack in the three kingdoms, accost any soldier who is not a raw recruit, and offer to pay for a pot of beer, that you will have an instant opportunity afforded you of putting your free-handed design into execution any time after 7 A.M. I don't think it would be exactly grateful in me to "split" upon the spots where a drop can be obtained in season; many a time has my parched throat been thankful for the cooling surreptitious draught and I refuse to turn upon a benefactor in a dirty way. Therefore suffice it to say that many a bold dragoon when he re-enters the barrack-room to get ready for church parade, has a wateriness about the eye and a knottiness in the tongue which tell of something stronger than the matutinal coffee. Indeed, when the trumpet sounds which calls the regiment to assemble on the parade-ground, there is dire misgiving in the mind of many a stalwart fellow, who is conscious that his face, as well as his speech, "berayeth him." But the lynx-eyed men in authority who another time would be down on a stagger like a card-player on the odd trick and read a flushed face as a passport to the guard-room, are genially blind this morning; and so long as a man possesses the capacity of looking moderately straight to his own front and of going right-about without a flagrant lurch, he is not looked at in a critical spirit on the Christmas church parade. And so the regiment marches off to church, the band playing merrily in its front. I much fear there is no very abiding sense in the bosoms of the majority of the sacred errand on which they are bound.

But there are two of the inmates of each room who do not go to church. The clever pudding-maker and a sub of his selection are left to cook the Christmas dinner. This, as regards the exceptional dainties, is done at the barrack-room fire, the cook-house being in use only for the now despised ration meat and for the still simmering puddings. The handy man cunningly improvises a roasting-jack, and erects a screen consisting of bed-quilts spread on a frame of upright forms, for the purpose of retaining and throwing back the heat. He is a most versatile genius, this handy man. Now we see him in the double character of cook and salamander, and anon he develops a special faculty as a clever table-decorator as well. This latter qualification asserts itself in the face of difficulties which would be utterly discomfiting to one of less fertility of resource. There is, indeed, a large expanse of table in every barrack-room; but the War Department has not yet thought proper to consider private soldiers worthy to enjoy the luxury of table-linen. Yet bare boards at a Christmas feast are horribly offensive to the eye of taste. Something must be done; something has already been done. Ever since the last issue of clean sheets, one or two whole-souled fellows have magnanimously abjured these luxuries _pro bono publico_. Spartan-like they have lain in blankets, and saved their sheets in their pristine cleanliness wherewithal to cover the Christmas table. So now these are brought forth, not snow-white certainly, nor of a damask texture, being indeed somewhat sackclothy in their appearance, but still they are immeasurably in advance of the bare boards; and when the covers are laid, with each man's best knife and fork, with a little additional crockery-ware borrowed of a beneficent married woman and with the dainty sprigs of evergreen stuck on every available coign, the effect is triumphantly enlivening.

By the time these preparations are complete the men are back from church; and after a brief attendance at stables to water and feed they assemble fully dressed in the barrack-room, hungrily silent. The captain enters the room and _pro formâ_ asks whether there are "any complaints?" A chorus of "No, sir," is his reply; and then the oldest soldier in the room with profuse blushing and stammering takes up the running, thanks the officer kindly in the name of his comrades for his generosity, and wishes him a "Happy Christmas and many of 'em" in return. Under cover of the responsive cheer the captain makes his escape, and a deputation visits the sergeant-major's quarters to fetch the allowance of beer which forms part of the treat. Then all fall to and eat! Ye gods, how they eat! Let the man who affirmed before the Recruiting Commission that the present scale of military rations was liberal enough show himself now, and then for ever hide his head! The troopers seem to have become sudden converts to Carlyle's theory on the eloquence of silence. It reigns supreme, broken only by the rattle of knives and forks and by an occasional gurgle indicative of a man judiciously stratifying the solids and liquids, for a space of about twenty minutes, by which time--be the fare goose or pork--it is, barring the bones, only "a memory of the past." The puddings, turned out of the towels in which they have been boiled, then undergo the brunt of a fierce assault; but the edge of appetite has been blunted by the first course and with most of the men a modicum of pudding goes on the shelf for supper. The soldier is very sensitive on the subject of his Christmas pudding. I remember once seeing a cook put on the table and formally "strapped" for allowing the pudding to stick to the bottom of the pot for lack of stirring.

At length dinner is over. Beds are drawn up from the sides of the room so as to form a wide circle of divans round the fire, and the big barrel's time has come at last. A clever hand whips out the bung, draws a pailful, and reinserts the bung till another pailful is wanted, which will be very soon. The pail is placed upon the hearthstone and its contents are decanted into the pint basins, which do duty in the barrack-room for all purposes from containing coffee and soup to mixing chrome-yellow and pipe-clay water. The married soldiers come dropping in with their wives, for whom the corporal has a special drop of "something short" stowed in reserve on the shelf behind his kit. A song is called for; another follows, and yet another and another. Now it is matter of notice that the songs of soldiers are never of the modern music-hall type. You might go into a hundred barrack-rooms or soldier's haunts and never hear such a ditty as "Champagne Charley" or "Not for Joseph." The soldier takes especial delight in songs of the sentimental pattern; and even when for a brief period he forsakes the region of sentiment, it is not to indulge in the outrageously comic but to give vent to such sturdy bacchanalian outpourings as the "Good Rhine Wine," "Old John Barleycorn," and "Simon the Cellarer." But these are only interludes. "The Soldier's Tear," "The White Squall," "There came a Tale to England," "Ben Bolt," "Shells of the Ocean," and other melodies of a lugubrious type, are the special favourites of the barrack-room. I remember once hearing a cockney recruit attempt "The Perfect Cure" with its accompanying gymnastic efforts; but he was I not appreciated, and indeed, I think broke down in the middle for want of encouragement.

Songs and beer form the staple of the afternoon's enjoyment, intermingled with quiet chat consisting generally of reminiscences of bygone Christmases. Here and there a couple get together who are "townies," i.e. natives of the same district; and there is a good deal of undemonstrative feeling in the way they talk of the scenes and folks of boyhood. There is no speechifying. Your soldier is not an oratorical animal. Not but what he heartily enjoys a speech; but he somehow cannot make one, or will not try. I remember me, indeed, of a certain quiet Scotsman who one Christmastime being urgently pressed to sing and being unblessed with a tuneful voice, volunteered in utter desperation a speech instead. He referred in feeling language to the various troop-mates who had left us since the preceding Christmas, made a touching allusion to the happy home circle in which the Christmases of our boyhood had been spent, referred to the manner in which the old "Strawboots" had cut their way to glory through the dense masses of Russian horsemen on the hillside of Balaclava, and wound up appropriately by proposing the toast of "our noble selves." He created an immense sensation, was vociferously applauded, and, indeed, was the hero of the hour; but ere next Christmas he was among the "have beens" himself, and his mantle not having devolved upon any successor we had to content ourselves with the songs and the beer.

It is a lucky thing for a good many that there is no roll-call at the Christmas evening stable-hour. The non-commissioned officers mercifully limit their requirements to seeing the horses watered and bedded down by the most presentable of the roisterers, whose desperate efforts to simulate abject sobriety in order to establish their claim for strong-headedness are very comical to witness. It has often been matter of wonderment to me how the orders for the following day which are "read out" at the evening stable-hour, are realised on Christmas evening with clearness sufficient to ensure their being complied with next day without a hitch; but the truth is that, as we shall presently see, a certain order of things for the morning after Christmas has become stereotyped.

This interruption of the evening stable-hour over the circle re-forms round the fire, and the cask finally becomes a "dead marine." The cap is then sent round for contributions towards a further instalment of the foundation of conviviality, which is fetched from the canteen or the sergeant's mess; and another and yet another supply is sent for, as long as the funds hold out and somebody keeps sober enough to act as Ganymede. The orderly sergeant is not very particular to-night about his watch-setting report, for he knows that not many have the physical ability to be absent if they were ever so eager. And so the lights go out; the sun of the dragoon may be said to set in beer and he is left to do his best to sleep himself sober. For in the morning the reins of discipline are tightened again. The man who is foolish enough to revivify the drink which "is dying out in him" by a refresher is apt to find himself an inmate of the black-hole on very scant warning. Headaches and thirst are curiously rife, and the consumption of "fizzers"--a temperance beverage of an effervescent character vended by an individual with the profoundest trust in human nature on the subject of deferred payments--is extensive enough to convert the regiment into a series of walking reservoirs of carbonic acid gas. The authorities display a demoniacal ingenuity in working the beer out of the system of the dragoon. The morning duty on the day following Christmas is invariably "watering order with numnahs," the numnah being a felt saddle-cloth without stirrups. Every man without exception rides out--no dodging is permitted--and the moment the malicious fiend of an orderly officer gets clear of the barracks he gives the word "Trot!" Six miles of it without a break is the set allowance; and it beats vinegar, pickles, tea smoked in a tobacco-pipe, or any other nostrum, as an effectual generator of sobriety. Six miles at the full trot without stirrups on a rough horse I can conscientiously recommend to the inebriated gentleman who fears to encounter a justly irate wife at two in the morning. I wont answer for the integrity of his cuticle when it is over; but I will stake my existence on the abject profundity of his sobriety. The process would extract the alcohol from a cask of spirits of wine, let alone dispel an average skinful of beer.

And thus evaporates the last vestige of the dragoon's Christmas festivity. It may be urged that the enjoyments of which I have endeavoured to give a faithful narrative are gross and have no elevating tendency. I fear the men of the spur and sabre must bow to the justice of the criticism; and I know of nothing to advance in mitigation save the old Scotch proverb: "It is ill to mak' a silk purse out o' a sow's ear."

THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER

In these modern days men live fast and forget fast; yet, since it was barely twenty-six years ago, numbers among us must still vividly remember the lurid autumn of 1870. Eastern and Northern France had been deluged with French and German blood. During the month of fighting from the 2nd of August to the 1st of September the regular armies of France had suffered defeat on defeat, and were now blockaded in Metz or were tramping from the catastrophe of Sedan to captivity in Germany. The Empire in France had fallen like a house of cards; Napoleon the Third was a prisoner of war in Cassel; the Empress and the ill-fated Prince Imperial were forlorn exiles in England. To the Empire had succeeded, at not even a day's notice--for in France a revolution is ever a summary operation--the Government of National Defence with the watchword of "War to the bitter end" rather than cede a foot of territory or one stone of a fortress. The Germans made no delay. The blood-tint had scarcely faded out of the waters of the Meuse, the unburied dead of Sedan yet festered in the sun-heat, and the blackened ruins of Bazeilles still smoked and stank, when their heads of columns set forth on the march to Paris. The troops were full of ardour; but in the Royal headquarters there was not a little disquietude. The old King made a long stay in the old cathedral city of Rheims, while men all over Europe were asking each other whether the catastrophe of Sedan had not virtually ended the war and were hoping for the white dove of peace to alight on the blood-stained land. But that happy consummation was not yet to be. When King Wilhelm crossed the frontier he had proclaimed that he warred not with the French nation but with its ruler. That ruler was now his prisoner; but Wilhelm had for adversary now the French nation, because it had taken up the quarrel which might have gone with the _Déchéance_ and in effect had made it its own. In the absence of overtures there was no alternative but to march on Paris.