Page:Once a Week Dec 1860 to June 61.pdf/578

18, 1861.] plain sailing, let us see how the same excellent Chantal will get out of the dilemma. I ought not, perhaps, to have left him with M. Wolowski, who lets himself be talked over by that silky vagabond in a way that disgraces his profession—but stay. Three quarters of an hour—more. Wolowski and his man are not going to waste it, that I will swear. Yes. I see a very much better way of using those fifty minutes than in looking into shop windows.”

Pursopen, September 1st.—Arrived here about nine o’clock last night. The family were dining out, and I took care to be in bed on their return. Here am I soldiering again! If there ever was a fellow fit for that, and for nothing else, it was myself. I knew by heart the facings, history, badges, war services, and army agents of every regiment; the dates of commissions, by purchase or otherwise, of every regimental officer of higher standing than myself; my subaltern Holbeach gave up betting with me on the above points, success being hopeless; I was well up among the captains in six years; and in a moment of disappointment to a petty ambition, I sold out.

The next day, I was sorry. It was muster, and my last parade. On returning to my barrack-room I took off my tight coatee and cumbrous epaulettes, and I remember throwing first them, and then myself on the bed and having a jolly good cry, or rather it would have been a jolly good cry, if there had not been a rap at the door at the end of three minutes, and before I could say “don’t come in,” Solomons entered. He came to buy my old uniform, and I sat up and had a deal with him.

The regret which began that day still lives. It quickens every time I see a big drum, or an Army List. There is that stupid fellow Holbeach—whom we used to call sometimes Dullbeach, not for his intelligence, and at other times Bullbitch, from the expression of his face—now commanding the regiment, a C.B., and a full colonel. We could never teach him anything, not even whether the facings of the royal regiments were blue or white.

I had hardly left the service six months when there was war with Russia. I was appointed to a company in a militia regiment, and might have had a commission in the Line by taking seventy-five men with me, but there was a struggle about beginning again as an ensign, and pride had the best of it. Then the war was over, the militia was disembodied, and I stood with my hands in my pockets.

Then everybody went crazy about the Volunteers, and seeing in the “Times” a War Office warrant authorising adjutants to that service, I wrote to my father’s old friend, Fairfax of Pursopen, who had just been appointed to the command of a battalion, and asked him to give me the adjutancy. He had been in the Blues for six months of his early life, and was only too glad of some immediate assistance. So he recommended me at once to the Lord Lieutenant of the county, and after I had gone through the hundred and one forms required by his lordship’s clerk, another clerk at the Horse Guards, and a third at the War Office, notice came at the end of four mouths that I would be appointed if I could pass an examination. This was a poser. The whole of the drills had been changed in 1859, and having to begin by unlearning the old book, I was worse off than a recruit who had only to learn the new one. However, I set to work, and after undergoing a short course of musketry with a company of Marines, and after living a month in a barrack-square, under their colour-sergeant, who worked harder than I did (and I often think how poorly I requited him), I was sufficiently crammed to scramble through. At the end of another month, my commission arrived, and it is now among the three clerks to be gazetted. Ambition is dead, but there is a satisfaction in a Queen’s commission, with a half-pay at the end of it.

Awoke this morning at five o’clock, by the cawing of rooks close to the window. Opened it, and took a look out. There is a fine view of the country, and of the windings of the river Dare, which floods the low grounds. That is the village of Pursopen, about half a mile from the house, and at the bottom of the hill; and a mile further is Dabshott, where I shall have to set up house; that is, if there is one to be had. The flyman who drove me here last night says that there are no houses to be let. I must live in Dabshott, as it is the head-quarters of the battalion; so some thing must be done, and that something quickly, for I cannot trespass at Pursopen for more than a week or ten days, and after that there will be nothing left for me but the Roaring Lion, where they charged me a shilling for a glass of brandy and water, when waiting for the fly last night. How tame the rooks are! One lit on the sill of the window, and only flew away on putting out my hand to take hold of it.

This is a fine old house with thick walls, but as comfortable as money and modern ingenuity can make it. All the furniture is new, but old-fashioned, to suit the house, and covered with heraldry. These Roaring Lions belong to Fairfax, but from what I recollect he is a quiet, unassuming man, and being of a good old family, never talks about it. Mrs. Fairfax was the daughter of a cotton-spinner at Halifax, with something suspicious about her mother. The Honourable James Tallboys married her for her money, and died before they had been married a year, leaving her with one son, who was a chubby boy, twelve years old, when I saw him last, ten years ago. Then her father died, leaving her very nearly half a million of money, and she was to have married an Irish marquis, but he wanted more management of the money than she would allow, and the match went off on the settlements. Fairfax being on the spot about this time, she married him more out of spite to the marquis than for anything else, and they lived very happily together ever afterwards. It was a great change for Fairfax, who had neither money nor a profession, and who hitherto could never afford to do anything but a little gardening