CHAPTER X. MUTINY IN THE RANKS.

There was great grief in the Duke’s Own. Colonel Prioleau was about to leave the regiment. He had commanded it for a number of years, and would have liked to have gone on commanding it to the end of the chapter, but promotion to the rank of general was fast approaching him, and he felt that he must ‘realise’ at least a part of his cash. Colonels of regiments in old days served for about tenpence a-day. The rest of their pay barely represented the interest upon the capital sum they had sunk in purchasing their rank. By exchanging to half-pay before promotion, a regimental lieutenant-colonel was able to pull a few[167] thousands out of the fire; and this Colonel Prioleau did.

There was great grief in the regiment at his approaching retirement. It was not so much on account of his personal qualities, although these—more particularly his easy-going laissez aller system—had long gained him great popularity, but because the command was to pass into the hands of one who was not, as the saying is, a ‘Duke’s Own man.’ Major Byfield had exchanged into the corps some few years previously, very much against the will of the regiment. Not that there was anything against him. Appearances were indeed in his favour. He was a quiet gentlemanly little person, with that slightly apologetic manner, and hesitating air, which often earn a man appreciation from his fellows, because they indicate a tacit acknowledgment of his inferiority.[168] Major Byfield showed himself still more nervous and undecided on joining the Duke’s Own. Although as a field officer his position was assured, and entitled him to considerable deference from all, he seldom claimed it or asserted himself more than he could help. His brother officers tolerated him, and were civil to him when they saw him, which was not often; but they yielded him no respect, and suffered him to interfere very little in the discipline and management of the corps. What could he know about the Duke’s Own, or its regimental ‘system?’ He had come from the 130th which, it was well known, had a very different ‘system,’ although both were, in fact, ruled by the Queen’s Regulations, and should have been governed on precisely the same lines. There is a good deal of mystery made and much stress laid upon the ‘system’[169] in force in a regiment. No doubt in many minor details there is a marked difference, but the broad outlines are, or ought to be, the same. But it is a favourite dogma, especially with officers in whom esprit de corps is strong, that no one can understand this system unless he has been trained in a regiment and assimilated it with his earliest ideas. So when the major spoke even in a whisper, or made the faintest hint of a suggestion, he was pooh-poohed and put down. Diggle, his fellow, although junior field officer, quietly said that it was all nonsense, that Byfield misunderstood the situation, that he had better wait till he had longer experience in the regiment before he presumed to put forward his views.

Major Byfield was thus satisfactorily repressed—but only for the time. He had[170] views and opinions of his own upon soldiering, and he was determined when opportunity came to give them full play. They had long persistently preached up and paraded before him the system in force in the Duke’s Own, but he had for as long come to the conclusion that the system was a bad one, and was resolved to reform it should he ever come into power. His character was a strange medley of opposite qualities. Behind the nervous diffidence, which being upon the surface seemed his most prominent trait, was an amount of quiet self-opinionated obstinacy which boded ill for those under his orders should he ever have much authority in his hands. Mrs. Byfield could have opened people’s eyes had she been permitted to disclose the secrets of the Byfield ménage. The major was as narrow-minded as a woman, and as[171] prone to mistake the relative proportion of things, to entirely ignore the main issues, to neglect or overlook broad questions, and concentrate himself with much tenacity upon comparatively unimportant details.

These peculiarities began to develop themselves very soon after he obtained the command. It became evident that the new colonel was a different man from what was supposed. He had been deemed a cipher—one who could hardly call his soul his own; but he proved a fussy, fidgetty, anxious creature, who from nervous apprehension, backed up by no small amount of self-conceit, promised to make everybody’s life a burden to him. The officers as a body began to fear that the good old times were on the wane. The decadence of the Duke’s Own must have fairly commenced when leave for hunting was refused and[172] there were two commanding officers’ parades on the same day. The fact was, the Colonel had resolved to reform the regiment according to his own ideas, and had already set to work with a will. The points on which it fell short of perfection were very clear to his own mind—a weak, but extremely active mind. He thought the officers neglected their business and knew too little of it—facts incontrovertible no doubt, although the remedy was not easy to discover, and needed stronger treatment than Colonel Byfield was in a position to apply. He felt dissatisfied, too, with the demeanour of the men in quarters and on parade, and if it was more within his compass to bring about improvement in these respects, his task was likely to be surrounded with the greater difficulty if his officers were discontented and soured. But the Colonel could[173] not see much beyond the end of his nose, and rushed forward blindly to his fate.

To come in for a large share of criticism, not to say abuse, from those under his orders, is too commonly the lot of the regimental lieutenant-colonel. Colonel Byfield was no exception to the general rule. Before he had been in command a month, his officers generally began to disapprove of his proceedings; after three, they disliked him cordially; and this grew into positive hatred at the end of six. Of course they kept their opinions very much to themselves. English officers, however grievous their wrongs, whether real or fancied, never overstep the bounds of due subordination; and however much those of the Duke’s Own may have chafed at their commanding officer’s trying ways and irksome rule, they did no more than call him a ‘beast’ to one[174] another, and utter frequent and fervid, but private prayers for his translation to some other sphere in this world or the next. They bore their burden bravely enough, silently too and without protest, except when some graceless subaltern or more artful captain wilfully exhibited an utter ignorance of the very rudiments of drill by clubbing his company upon parade, or comported himself disgracefully at the weekly examinations—offences especially heinous in the eyes of a Colonel whose greatest ‘fad’ was to make his officers walking vade mecums or living encyclop?dias of military knowledge. The schoolmaster was abroad in the Duke’s Own, very much to everyone’s discomfort and dissatisfaction.

Excessive timidity, an exaggerated fear of constituted authority, were the secrets of Colonel Byfield’s irritating line of conduct.[175] He was for ever invoking the distant deities of the Horse Guards, and deprecating their wrath. As for their local chief priest, the general officer commanding the Triggertown district, whose authority was much more tangible and near at hand, Colonel Byfield had for him the most wholesome and abject apprehension. It was to appease the possible fury of this awful functionary that he worried and harassed the regiment from morning till night.

‘What will the general say?’ or ‘What will the general do?’ were phrases continually on his lips. He forgot that, as a matter of fact, the general, who was an ordinary general, would probably say or do nothing at all. But this professional ‘Jorkins’ was quoted on every occasion.

‘I cannot overlook your misconduct,’ he would say to Joe Hanlon, when brought up[176] for the thousandth time for being drunk. ‘The general won’t let me.’

‘As if the general cared,’ muttered ‘the Boy’ to himself.

‘I must punish you; I must, indeed.’

‘Colonel Prioleau never did, sir; and I hope, sir—’

‘Colonel Prioleau is not here now, and I don’t choose to be spoken to in that way. Fourteen days’ marching order drill; and if you come here again, I’ll try you for “Habitual”—I will, mark my words.’

‘What’s the good of serving on in the old corps now?’ said Hanlon, very wroth, after he had done his defaulter’s drill. ‘It’s not what it used to be. I’ll put in for my discharge.’

He was fully entitled to it. Twenty-one years’ service, all told. Five good-conduct badges, less one, which his recent misconduct[177] had robbed him of; for with old soldiers it is strength of head, or immunity from punishment that brings reputation; and Hanlon, thanks to Colonel Prioleau’s good nature, had the credit of being one of the best behaved men in the regiment.

‘I won’t stay to be humbugged about,’ he said, indignantly, to his comrade Herbert. ‘I’ll take my pension and look out for a billet in civil life.’

‘What can you get to do?’

‘Lots of things. Commissionaire, prison warder, attendant in a lunatic ’sylum.’

Herbert pricked up his ears.

‘Do you think you could get the last? I wish you would, and I’ll tell you why You’ve never heard my story?’

Whereupon Herbert told it all.

‘I knew you was a nob from the first. I saw it in your talk and in the cut of your[178] jib. Dr. Plum’s of Greystone, you say. Right you are. That’s where I’ll go. To-morrow, if not sooner, and I’ll give you the office—double quick. Hold on a bit, that’s all you’ve got to do; hold on, and do your duty, and it’ll all come right in the end. And see here—’

Hanlon looked about him, as if afraid of listeners.

‘Things ain’t comfortable in the old corps, not just now; and there’s going to be a row. They won’t let on to you,’cos you’re a non-com, and what’s more, only a recruit. There’s men in the regiment mean mischief, if they only get the chance; and if they don’t, they’ll make it, sure as my name’s Joe.’

‘What can they do?’

‘They don’t think or care. All they want is a rumpus, so as to get old Byfield[179] in trouble and make him leave, and that they’ll be able to do. Don’t join them, not whatever they say. Keep your ears cocked, and nip in—only on the right side.’

Hanlon had taken his discharge and got the promise of a billet at Dr. Plum’s, when the storm actually broke in the Duke’s Own.

Colonel Byfield had been agitated beyond measure at the news of the approaching move of his regiment to one of the large camps, and in view of the scrutiny which there awaited him his petty tyranny had passed all bounds. He had parades morning, noon, and night. He exercised the men ad nauseam at squad drill, goose step, and the manual and platoon. He marched them perpetually in battalion up and down the barrack yard, and he took them out day after day upon Triggertown[180] Common for light infantry drill. All this, albeit torture of the most painful description, they could have tolerated probably without a murmur had not the Colonel, dissatisfied with the progress made, sentenced the regiment to be deprived of all leave in all ranks.

This was the point at which the worm turned. One fine morning, long after the ‘dressing’ bugle had sounded, followed by the ‘non-commissioned officers call’ and the ‘fall-in,’ not a man made his appearance upon parade. Colonel Byfield and the officers had the whole square to themselves. The rest of the regiment with the exception of a number of men belonging to one company, F, formed up in the ditch, and while the commanding officer was whistling at vacancy, marched off in excellent order to a distant part of the glacis,[181] where they piled arms and refused to return.

It would be tedious, and it indeed forms no part of this history to narrate, except in the briefest terms, the progress of this very serious military lache. The men, as is usual in such cases, went to the wall. The ringleaders were hunted out, tried and severely punished, and the whole regiment was ordered to proceed on foreign service forthwith. The causes which had led to the disturbance were closely investigated, and as a natural consequence Colonel Byfield was placed upon half-pay.

It was for a long time doubtful whether Diggle, who was the next senior, should be allowed to succeed to the command; but he brought all the interest he could to bear, and he eventually won the day.

As Colonel Diggle, commanding a corps[182] really distinguished, although temporarily under a cloud, he found Sir Rupert Farrington not indisposed to accept his proposals for Letitia; and the marriage came off just before the regiment embarked for Gibraltar.

It was at Farrington Hall that the conversation turning, as it had done more than once before, upon the recent mutiny, brought our hero, Herbert Larkins, prominently to the front.

‘The movement was not general, certainly not,’ Diggle had said. ‘One of the companies, F, Ernest’s in fact, did not take any share in it.’

‘Does Ernest deserve the credit of that?’

‘Not exactly. It was due rather to an astute young corporal, who quietly locked the doors of the men’s rooms. They couldn’t get out to join.’

[183]

‘Really? He was promoted, of course?’

‘Yes; he is now a sergeant, and is sure to get on. Oh yes, young Larkins is sure to get on.’

‘It was young Larkins, was it?’

‘Do you know him?’

‘I think I do. I will tell you about it one of these days.’

Diggle, as one of the Farrington family, would soon have a right to know.