A Born Soldier

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A BORN SOLDIER BY JOHN STRANGE WINTER, AUTHOR OF BOOTI.ES' BABY,' 'ARMY SOCIETY,' 'CAVALRY LIFE,' 'GARRISON GOSSIP,' 'IN QUARTERS,' 'ON MARCH,' 'HE WENT FOR A SOLDIER,' 'THE OTHER MAN'S WIFE,' 'ONLY HUMAN,' 'AUNT JOHNNIE,' 'RED-COATS,' 'A SEVENTH CHILD,' ETC. LONDON : F. V. WHITE & CO., 14 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C. ro Mrs STANNARD, MY MOTHER-IN-LAW (' DEAR GRANNIE '), I AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATE XCbis Stovp IN MEMORY OF A DARK TIME PASSED THROUGH TOGETHER WHILE IT WAS BEING WRITTEN. JOHN STRANGE WINTER. CONTENTS.

Chapter I. Phil Jervis

" Were all things certain, nothing would be sure ; Joy would be joyless, of misfortune free." Euripides. " Tinker," said Phil Jervis, " fetch me a glass of brown sherry." " Yes, sir," replied Tinker. Phil Jervis sat down in the biggest armchair which his quarters contained and stretched out his feet to the roaring fire which blazed in the hideous grate. " Ugh ! It's cold and damp and miserable. Beastly weather! Queer thing John Chinaman always turns us out for a field day when it is wet and raw and sodden. I believe he does it on purpose. By Jove, it's enough to kill a chap !" He pulled off his gauntlets and dropped them on to the nearest chair, then his white gloves, which were pretty well marked with the use of bridle and sword. He gradually divested himself of one belt after another, and made a valiant attempt to get out of his long boots.

That, however, was beyond him, and he laid back in the chair again, rubbing his cold hands together. " I wonder if it is true that John Chinaman is made of cast iron ? I believe it is. Never ails anything ; always looks as if he had got one foot in the grave, but never gets it there. Wet, cold, sleet, rain, snow, heat, dust, all seem alike to him ; and yet, I shouldn't like to be John Chinaman. No, that I shouldn't. Poor old John ! Wonder what he'll do when his command is over and he's no longer able to pick out all the vilest days in the year to make six hundred men miserable on. Ugh ! How chilled I am ! It makes me quite pity myself to think of it." At that moment Tinker returned with the brown sherry on a tray. " Ah, that's better ! You have had the best of it this morning, Tinker," he said, as he drained the glass.

" Yes, sir," said Tinker, " I thought of you several times. Mr. Malone, sir, he wanted to give me my stripes the other day, but I thinks to meself a man who doesn't know when he's got a good billet ought to be cow-hided." "So you decided not to chuck me over, eh, Tinker?" " I did that same, sir. So I says to Mr. Malone, I says, ' I don't see as how my master can possibly get on without me, sir,' and Mr. Malone, he says, 'Well, Tinker, I think you have got too good an opinion of yourself.' ' Perhaps, I have, sir,' says I, ' but I would rather not leave Mr. Jervis at present.' " " Well now, there you are absolutely wrong, Tinker," said Phil Jervis promptly, " you know you mayn't have such a chance again of getting on. After all, it's every soldier's duty to get on as far in his profession as he possibly can.

You made a great mistake." " I don't think so, sir," replied the soldier, " I had a wretched time before I came to you, sir, and I'm happier than I've ever been in my life. If you don't want to get rid of me, sir, I don't want to get rid of you." PHIL JERVIS. 9 " I don't want to get rid of you," said Jervis, quickly, " you do all right for me. But how would you do if I happened to leave the Service." The soldier thought for a moment, then looked at the ceiling and scratched the crown of his head, looked down at the floor, smoothed his chin with his finger and thumb, " Well, sir," he said in a deliberate voice at last, " it 'ud be quite possible to buy me orf." " Oh — oh — oh — I see. Yes, that's it, is it ? How ever, I haven't left the Service yet, Tinker. When I do, we will think about it.

Now, just get these boots off for me, will you ?" The boots were tight and wet, and needed each ol them a long pull and a strong pull before Phil Jervis was free of them. He sighed with relief as each one was safely off, and Tinker, with the air of a man who knew what was expected of him without being told, drew a little fringe-trimmed table to his master's left elbow, and set upon it a stand of pipes and a huge jar of tobacco. Phil Jervis filled his pipe and set it agoing before he got further out of his uniform. Then by degrees he got rid of one garment after an other and was soon warmly and comfortably arrayed in a suit of thick, blanket-like tweed. " By the bye, were there any letters for me, Tinker ?" he asked when he was once more settled down in the big chair. " I'll see, sir. " Wonder if John Chinaman has got out of his uniform yet.

Poor old chap ! What a pity he don't get married ! Don't know on the whole, when a Colonel is happily married, whether a married Colo nel isn't better for the comfort of the regiment than a bachelor. If poor old John Chinaman had any pursuits except soldiering he would not be so bad ; but he hasn't a second idea in his head — field day, drill, red book : red book, drill, field day — besting the Commissariat people and arranging penny-read ings free gratis and for nothing for the ranks, are his only ideas of amusement. Poor old chap ! What a good thing it would be if he were to get married." Up to that time, it had never occurred to Phil Jervis himself to get married. He was five and twenty years old, was of a fair height, of a strong, lithe, athletic build, had plenty of nice brown hair, rather inclined to be curly; he had a clean-shaven, shrewd, good-looking face, excellent teeth, and a cleft in his chin.

As a soldier, he was as good as the average cavalry officer who has got through his examination by the skin of his teeth ; he shirked his work whenever it was practicable, and held his life as cheaply as he was then holding his cherry wood pipe. He was popular with the men, particularly the men of his own troop, was adored by his ser vants, faithfully loved by his horses and dogs, and had many accomplishments. He could play a tune on his chin with his knuckles — and, mind you, it is not every man who can play a tune on his chin with his knuckles. He could whistle all the operas and fashionable songs, and was commonly called " the Regimental Chevalier." He played a bit on the piano, and was a really admirable performer on the penny whistle. On the banjo he was proficient, and he knew more card tricks than any other man in the White Horse.

Nor did the list of his accomplishments end here. Heaven knows where he had picked it up, for it was a faculty to which he never owned, but Phil Jervis was exceed ingly clever at modelling, and more than once when the officers of the White Horse were assembled at dinner, one or other of them had been surprised to find instead of the usual roll of bread within his dinner napkin, a bold and admirable caricature of himself. In fact, there was scarcely a room in the officers' PHIL JERVIS. 11 quarters that did not possess some treasure of this kind ; and tradition had it that somewhere or other there was still extant a caricature of Colonel Weaver- Marston himself, a caricature which took the form of a grinning Mandarin, wearing a Chinese costume, with wagging head and projecting tongue, while at the base of the bust was carved in deep letters the two words " John Chinaman."

Needless to say, this had never figured on the dinner table of the officers' mess ; but it had appeared in a mysterious manner as if it had been evolved out of space. The likeness to the Colonel was inimitable, and from that day " John Chinaman" had been his accepted name for the use and know ledge of every officer in the regiment excepting him self. Everybody had wanted the little image, and gradually the replicas thereof had become so numer ous that the value of the original as an original had disappeared altogether. Nobody, however, in the regiment had been willing to father these little images, and when the Colonel himself chanced to notice one during a semi-official visit to one of his officers' rooms, and had admired it so much that he wished to buy one like it, it was impossible for the owner thereof to say more than that he had had it given to him, and did not know whence it had come.

But the real culprit, Phil Jervis, never complied with the Colonel's wish of sending him the caricature of him self, all unrecognising of its relationship as he was. Tinker presently returned with a batch of letters, the post corporal having come in while the regiment was out of barracks engaged in the delightful duty of a field day. Therewas an invitation to a dinner party at the Deanery, and one for Sunday evening supper at the house of one of the doctors in the town. There were two letters in feminine handwritings — one from a little married woman in London, who was by way of having a tendrcsse for the good-looking dragoon ; another from a girl whom he had left behind him in the last town in which the regiment had been quar tered. He was not exactly bored by these letters. The little married lady held out a delicate suggestion of a dinner of four at the Grosvenor with a theatre to follow, and added, in a careless and casual kind of way, that if he could get leave she intended to ask a great friend of hers and her particular man, as her husband was going to shoot in Yorkshire that week and would not be able to join the party.

" That means two hansoms," said Phil Jervis to himself. " I wonder if I can persuade John China man to give me a couple of days' leave." The other letter was simple in tone. It was not marked by the studious care which characterised the epistle of the married woman — that might have been shouted from the housetops. This one was full to overflowing of tenderness and regret, of anxiety to see him again, of conjectures whether he had for gotten her or not. " Poor little soul ! I must send her a box of sweeties," said Phil Jervis, crumbling the letter into a ball and throwing it on the fire. He opened the next letter with a kind of air of relief, as if he somewhat regretted that episode in his last billet. " Pity I let her start writing to me," his thoughts ran, as he tore open the envelope, " always a pity when one does that.

It seemed kinder at the time, too, but after all, there's nothing like burning your boats behind you. Poor little soul !" He drew the letter out of the envelope. Oh, just a reminder from his tailor that a cheque on account would be desirable. " I'd better send him a cheque to-night, I think," he said to himself. There was only one letter left. It was an invitation to a dance at a very nice house about three miles PHIL JERVIS. 13 from Blankhampton, not exactly what you would call county people, but very nearly so. " I may as well go to that," said Phil, as he put the letter down. Just then there was a sound of footsteps along the bare and echoing corridor without and a vigorous thump sounded on the door. " Come in," roared Phil. " Oh, it's you, is it?" he remarked, as a figure in light grey clothes came into the room. '' Yes.

I came to ask you if you were going to the town." Yes, I am." " Because I will go with you if you are." " All right." " Are you ready to go now ?" " Yes. I am going in five minutes." " Are you going to Mrs. Murgatroyd's?" " I rather thought of it." " Well, you see, there isn't much to do on an off day, is there? I don't mind going to Mrs. Murga troyd's if you are going, but I hate going to these places by myself. So we may as well go down to gether, don't you think?" " My dear chap," said Jervis, " I should be de lighted. I wanted to look in on John Chinaman for a minute. Do you happen to know whether he is about?" " What do you want ?" " I want a two days' leave." " Oh, I shouldn't go this afternoon if I were you. He has just discovered that a drain somewhere at the back of those watercart sheds is queerish, and he is raising the very devil over it.

I'd put it off, old chap, till the morning if I were you. Ask him when you've got your uniform on, and then he will be more amenable to reason." " All right ! By the bye, is there anything wrong ?" " Yes, I believe there's something wrong. Grating got stuffed up or something. One would think it was the battle of Inkermann over again to hear John Chinaman talking about it ; and there he is standing now watching it being cleared out, and explaining the system to the men. As if it were any use ex plaining a system to a lot of private soldiers !" " Poor old John !" laughed Jervis, " he certainly does do his best for them all. I don't believe the men will ever get another Colonel who will try to treat them as if they were rational beings and ex plain systems to them. Poor old chap ! He don't get much reward for it."

" Ah, well, he's Colonel. He's got his reward." " And by and by," cried Jervis, " he'll bloom out into a D.A.A.G., and then he can explain systems without making himself a nuisance to anybody. After all, we've got to listen to him, but nobody has got to listen to a D.A.A.G. By the bye, Stonor, won't you have a pipe before you go ?" " No, thanks ; but I'll have a cigarette if you want to finish your pipe." " Do, old chap. There are plenty in that silver box up there." " Thanks," and then Stonor sat down, and the two went on talking about John Chinaman and all man ner of regimental matters, while all the time through Jervis's brain there ran the half-tender, half-despairing words of the girl he had left behind him. PRUDENCE AND INCLIxVA TION. 15

Chapter II. Prudence And Inclination

" True happiness Consists not in the multitude of friends, But in the worth and choice." Ben Jonson. The following morning Jervis took the first oppor tunity of hinting gently and deferentially to the Colonel that he was very desirous of having a two days' leave during the following week. In spite of the drain trouble of the previous afternoon, Colonel Weaver-Marston was in a very pleasant mood, and he wrote " J.W.M." in the corner of the necessary permit without asking a single question or making any remark whatsoever. It must be confessed that, on the whole, that particular grant of leave did not make Phil Jervis so happy as such a favour usually did. He did not absolutely want to go to London to dine and do a theatre with the little woman at whose instigation he had asked for leave ; as a matter of fact, he cared nothing about her.

She amused him a little sometimes, and generally bored him a good deal ; and moreover, she took such elaborate precautions that their little affair should not be known to her husband that Phil felt always more or less like a horse in a kicking-strap. He was haunted, too, by a sort of feeling that, having got a few hours' leave, he ought really to go and spend it in the town which they had left three months before, and he would like to have done so. He had been fond of the place, and he was something more than fond of the little girl who was hungering and yearning to see him A BORA' SOLDIER. again ; and yet, he did not feel that it would be politic to venture to go there at all. She was everything that was sweet and good and charming, but he had never contemplated marrying her for a moment, and he did not want her to think that he had any such thought in his mind.

" You see," he was in the way of arguing, " a wife makes such a devil of a difference to a fellow in the Service; and when one has only just enough ballast to keep one's own boat upright, it is fatal to make the same ballast divide, and possibly half again over other craft." He did not want to marry : if he had wanted to marry anybody — that is to say, if he had been very rich — he would probably have settled everything with Katey before he had left Danford for the autumn manœuvres. If he had been a marrying man he would have liked to marry her; but he was not a marrying man, and he could not afford to send pru dence to the wall. But all the same, a pair of dewy blue eyes looking out from under a mass of ruddy bronze hair haunted him very persistently. " I say, old chap," said Gwyn to him that night at dinner, " you look very down in the mouth.

What's the matter?" Phil pulled himself together with a shake. " The matter ? Nothing, nothing ; I'm all right. I'm going to town for a couple of days next week. I never was more fit in my life." " Oh, I thought you seemed dull," was Gwyn's comment. " Not the least in the world. By the bye, you heard that story about Moore, didn't you ?" " Moore ? No. What about him ?" said some one at the other end of the table. " Oh, a splendid joke. The Colonel asked Moore last night how it was that drains were always getting choked. I don't know whether the Colonel wanted PRUDENCE AND INCLINATION. 17 to know for information, or whether he wanted to find out how great a fool Moore was on the subject of drains; but Moore looked up at him in his little Scotch terrier dog sort of way, and jerked out ' I'll give it up, sir. I never guessed a riddle in my life.' " " No !" exclaimed the other.

" Fact, I assure you, and the chief's face was a study, I can tell you. Poor old John Chinaman !" "What did the Colonel say?" " He looked rather astonished for a minute, and then he said in his stiffest voice, ' I asked you a question, Mr. Moore, not a riddle. When I take to asking riddles, I shall not put them to my subalterns.' But Moore was quite equal to the occasion. He answered without a moment's hesitation, ' I am sure I am very sorry, sir. It never occurred to me that you were serious. I am afraid I don't know any thing about drains ; but I should think that a drain gets choked up when something not liquid goes down it.' ' A very proper answer,' said the Colonel, ' but, of course, the great question is how to prevent matter that is not liquid from going down the drains.' " " I wonder when I shall see you again," rang through Jervis's head, and he leaned his head upon his hand and, closing his eyes, saw for a moment in fancy that sweet little face once more.

" I'm sure you have got something on your mind, Jervis," said Gwyn. Phil looked up again. " No, no, not at all. I was thinking about some thing." "That's bad. I bet a fiver it's a woman," said Gwyn, sardonically, at which Phil laughed, and adroitly turned the conversation. But, somehow, try as he would, he could not get little Katey out of his mind. Perhaps she was thinking of him a good B deal, and that made his thoughts turn towards her. He did not mean to marry her ; he could not afford to many her; but, somehow, the little witch had taken possession of his heart, and would not be ousted from it. Nevertheless, he made his arrange ments for spending his short leave in London ; and while he wrote a very guarded epistle to Mrs. Paget, he sent a large box of sweetmeats, and what he had pleased to call a sympathetic letter to the little girl, Katey, whom he had left behind at Danford.

He received Katey's answer just as he was start ing for London, when Tinker's wooden voice at his elbow said, " Letters, sir." Phil Jervis quite jumped when he saw the thick packet addressed in poor little Katey's conspicuous handwriting lying on the top of the batch which the postman had brought him. He took them off the tray and thrust them into his pocket, finished what he was about, and, with a parting instruction or two to his servant, went out to the cab which was waiting for him below. It was a hansom cab of rather a ramshackle description, and Phil and his portmanteau were soon on their way to the station. He did not look at his letters until he was safely on the road to London. He left Katey's packet until the last, and opened it with a sigh that was almost a groan. "You darling to send me those sweeties," she began.

" It isn't that I care the value of a penny about sweets as sweets, but your thought of me has made me so happy. I have been in heaven ever since they arrived ; it seems like desecration to eat even one of them, but I have eaten one or two, and they taste the sweeter to me because you sent them." This is a very fair sample of the entire letter. It was very long ; full of details of her daily life, of her feelings, of her anxieties, and her hopes for the future — the anxieties that were certain to come to the worst PRUDENCE AND INCLIxVA TION. 19 issue, the hopes which he knew would never be ful filled, the feelings which were stirred only for him and because of him, and of the life which was, since he had left Danford, not a life, but a mere existence. It ended, poor little soul, in this fashion, " For life or death, for good or ill, always your own, Katey."

It is only fair to say that Phil Jervis arrived at King's Cross in a towering temper, nor did his mood improve as he found himself rattling along in a hansom, certainly a better one than that which had carried him from the barracks to Blankhampton station, towards his hotel in St. James's. The contrast be tween the deadly earnestness of the girl who loved him and the artificiality of the worldly little woman about whom he did not care so much as a button, but with whom he was going to dine that night, jarred painfully upon his feelings. After all, it might be a good thing if he made up his mind to throw in his lot with little Katey — he hardly knew — but certain is it that had Mrs. Paget been free and endowed with mil lions, under no circumstances could Phil Jervis ever have brought himself to marry her.

Yet he had given this woman, about whom he did not care the prover bial two straws, the benefit of his two days' leave which he had denied to the girl, who would have re garded even so short a visit as a foretaste of Paradise. Things are very strange and odd in this world, and sometimes men are the least kind to those they love the best. He duly arrived at the Grosvenor at the appointed time, enquired for Mrs. Paget, and then found that he was the guest of a Colonel Liddell. He had never happened to meet Colonel Liddell. Mrs. Paget's bosom friend — Mrs. Sandars-Johnstone — he had seen several times, but it must be owned that he would rather not have been the guest of a man whom he had never seen. He was the first of the party to arrive, and he wandered about the big drawing-room, with its many chintz-covered chairs, and its somewhat inhospitable and barren look, disconsolately enough for ten minutes or so, when his host walked into the room.

The two men looked at one another as a couple of dogs very often do — very much as if the next moment might find them fighting. Then Col onel Liddell broke the ice, and in a very stand-offish tone asked him if he was Mr. Jervis. He replied that he was ; after which, they fraternised in a defensive kind of way, if the truth be told, each man wondering what the other was thinking of him. The two ladies came together. Mrs. Paget, who was a little piquant woman, was radiant in black and pale blue. She was but simply dressed and wore no jewels beyond a diamond crescent on the left side of her bodice — a cres cent like a young summer moon, which gleamed and glinted in the gaslight and seemed, in a mysterious and subtle way, to beckon him as if it were a thing of life. The other lady, who was all in black, was tall and very handsome ; and Phil grasped without any outside information that it was for the sake of her bright eyes that his host had been willing, not to say eager, to give this particular entertainment.

The dinner passed off as such dinners usually do. The ladies' room at the Grosvenor is not usually a scene of wild festivity and hilarity. There was only one other table occupied, so that the tall, deliberate gentlemen in black plush were in no fear of getting their golden garters disarranged by undue hurry. A party of four at a small dinner-table cannot, in the ordinary course of things, have any private conver sation whatever ; and it was not until the two couples were safely seated in two hansoms that either Phil or Mrs. Paget uttered a single word that might not have been spoken before the whole world. As soon as they had started, Mrs. Paget turned eagerly towards him — PRUDENCE AND INCLINATION. 21 " Well," she said, " had you any trouble to get off?" " Not the least. I asked for leave, and here I am."

" And how long have you got?" " Two days." "Two days!" in an accent of extreme surprise " Oh, Phil, and how much did you ask for ? " " I asked for two days." " Oh ! — why didn't you ask for a week ?" " Because if I had done so, I probably should not have got even two days." " You might have tried it on." " Well, I might, but I didn't see the good." " But you wanted more?" " Yes, of course, I always want more leave than 1 can get — every man always does, but they can't have it. It was a great chance my getting this — a great chance — but a week was simply out of the question." " Then you go back " " The day after to-morrow." " Oh, well, we must make the best of it." She talked on until they reached the theatre, but, somehow, Phil Jervis could not in any way attune himself to the situation. There had always been a sort of love-making between them, not violent love making, you know, because Mrs. Paget had too great a sense of the conventionalities for that, but a press ure ofthe hand, a lingering touch of the fingers, and a dwelling on her words, an archness in her upward look.

For months past they had gone through the whole gamut of tender signs, which are the small change of an unfortunate love ; but to-night, although he had not seen her for about six months, he could not help seeming utterly prosaic. He realised that she was made up, that her hair was tinted too brightly for the shining copper-like tones to be out of Nature's workshop. He realised that she was not young as she had been, that she used a great deal of powder, and was not above heightening the effect of her already dark eyebrows and eyelashes. She was exquisitely dressed, of course, and suitably to the occasion ; but he had more than a suspicion that she knew the use of belladonna. She had a rather high pitched society voice, and said " don't he," and " ain't it," with the fluency and verve of a costermonger.