I
IT was in the spring of 19— that the Dapple Grays returned from South Africa, covered with wounds, glory, boils, and khaki, this last presenting many solutions of continuity. One finds the arrival of H. M. troopship Paradise at Porthampton Dockyard referred to in the newspapers bearing the date of that occurrence as an event calculated to awaken emotions of gratitude and enthusiasm in the bosom of every Briton. An illuminated address was presented to the Chief by the Mayor and Corporation of the borough, and the Dapple Grays were subsequently entertained, the Colonel and officers to a banquet, and the rank and file to a blowout.
“You return to us, Captain,� the Mayor is reported to have said in a complimentary rider addressed to the commanding officer of the Paradise, “with a freight of heroes.�
“A freight of devils, sir!� the Captain remarked in loud-toned confidence to the neighbor on his left. “If the Admiralty had any sense of humor—or any sense of fitness, by George!—the name of the ship would have been changed before we sailed. But the Paradise has seemed almost like one, sir, since we disembarked ’em, and that’s a fact. What’s the next toast on the list, did you ask? ‘The united healths of the two regimental V. C.’s, Captain the Hon. Gerald Garthside and Private Dancey Juxon.’�
“What were the special acts of gallantry, do you—ah!—happen to—ah!—remember?� asked the Captain’s left-hand neighbor (a pompous local magnate), “for which the Cross has been—ah!—conferred?�
“Usual thing. Garthside—that’s Garthside, on the Mayor’s left hand, trying to look modest, and succeedin’ uncommon badly—Garthside rode from Mealiekloof to Blitzfontein with despatches for the Brigadier, peppered by Cronje’s outposts from overlooking ground nearly the whole distance. Juxon was cut off while out on scout with a detachment, and got away from twenty Boers with his officer on the crupper. Young Bogle, next-of-kin to Lord Baverstone, died before Juxon got back to the regiment, chipped in too many places for recovery! Better off if he’d been left behind, do you say? Probably—probably. But Juxon has the V. C., and they’re bringin’ him in to hear his health proposed.... Fine-lookin’ young Tommy, isn’t he? Looks quiet and well-behaved, you think? Ah, you ought to have been with us on the voyage from the Cape. The evil genius of the lower troop-deck, and that’s facts. Ringleader in every act of insubordination, up to all sorts of devilment, a black sheep, sir, a black—hip, hip, hurray! For he’s a jolly——�
“And so,� said the Colonel of the Dapple Grays to his Senior Major, a few weeks later, when the regiment had shaken down in its old barracks at Studminster; when its feminine complement had rejoined it; when wives once more “upon the strength� were washing the tattered remains of shirts which had seen more service than soap-suds, and husbands were employing eloquence in the effort to convince civilian visitors to the canteen that, despite the solemn warning recently issued from the most authoritative quarters, to treat the newly-convalescent enteric patient to beer or ardent spirits is to accelerate and not to retard his return to perfect health—— “And so it’s a settled thing, the engagement between your little girl and Garthside? Affair not jumped up in a hurry? Began a year before the regiment was ordered to the Front? Of course. My wife saw the attachment growing between ’em, and helped it on, she tells me. Every married woman’s a match-maker, you know—don’t you know—whether she’s put her own private pot on a bit of good blood, with temper and stayin’ power and so forth, or a dee-d confounded showy screw. And your little girl, not having a level-headed mother of her own alive to look after her!... Deucedly raw weather, you know, don’t you know!�
Sir Alured broke off, anticipating rather than seeing the gray change in Major Rufford’s face, and remembering that the handsome wife, who had died when Emmie was a hoyden of thirteen, had signalized the close of her career upon earth as Major Rufford’s wife and the mother of his children by an act of desperate folly. But the Senior Major’s wounds had been cicatrized by the great healer Time, and he looked back quietly enough as the Colonel cleared his throat with unnecessary violence, and twisted the great moustache that had been iron-gray and was now snow-white.
“Lady Gassiloe has been very kind, and Emmie doesn’t forget how much she owes her. And there’s the right stuff in Garthside; I can trust him to make my little girl a good husband. It’s odd, when one comes to think of it, that our other Victoria Cross man is going to be married, and to Emmie’s foster-sister, Peggy Donohoe.�
“The deuce!� said Sir Alured. “Is that dee-d young scoundrel, Juxon, going to settle down? Seems too good to be true. Why, the old Paradise was hell when Juxon wasn’t in the cells. Nearest approach to a rhyme I ever made in my life, by George! But Juxon’s character apart it’s not a bad match. The young blackguard has plenty of good looks, and Peggy’s as pretty a girl as you may see, look high or low. And she thinks Juxon a proo shevally with his V. C.; and so do poor Bogle’s people, and so do the public, by Jove! You should have heard him when he reported himself.... ‘What did you mean, you dee-d idiot,’ I asked him, ‘by picking up a man who’d had the top of his head shot clean off, and couldn’t live five minutes? D’ye call that philanthropy? In my opinion it’s dee-d foolery!’ ‘Beggin’ your pardon, Colonel, sir!’ says Juxon, ‘I calls it precaution. When I ’oisted Mr. Bogle up be’ind me, I see’d ’e’d ’ad ’is gruel, an’ the last breath went out of ’im before old ’Andsome-Is—that’s wot I calls that ’ere spavined gray o’ mine—’ad got into ’is stride. But the bullets was ’ummin’ round me like ’ornets, an’ pore Mr. Bogle, lyin’ as ’e wos acrost my ’ams, drawed fire an’ furnished cover.’ Furnished cover! The cool young beggar fortifies his rear with the next in succession to one of the oldest peerages in the United Kingdom, gets mentioned in despatches, and receives his V. C.! Too dee-d funny, you know, don’t you know!�
And Sir Alured mixed a brandy and soda, and chose an enormous cigar from a case resembling a young Gladstone bag. The conversation took place in a curious ground-glass hutch, sacred to the inner mysteries of Official business, and labeled “Private.� And as the second in command charged and kindled a meerschaum of incredible age and foulness, there came a knock at the door.
“C’min!� barked the Chief over the rim of the tilted tumbler, and the regimental Doctor looked round the door. “Oh! it’s you, Assassin!� he said, as he wiped the froth off the great white moustache. “How many exenterics have you kicked out of the convalescent ward this morning?�
“Three,� said the Assassin—“Denver, Moriarty, and Jarman. Garthside’s lambs all.�
“And dee-d malingerers, in my opinion!� said Sir Alured.
“I’m with you there, sir,� responded the Assassin with a twinkle. Then he relapsed into professional gravity, and said as he accepted a cigar and a peg, “There are one or two bad cases of relapse, I’m sorry to say—as the result of incautious indulgence in alcoholic beverages.�
“Of course, of course!� growled Sir Alured. “When a man with a granulated stomach uses the organ as a receptacle for whisky, beer, and gin, contributed in unlimited quantities by admirin’ friends, he oughtn’t to be surprised when he finds himself drivin’ to the cemetery on a gun carriage to the tune of the Dead March in Saul, with his boots following as chief mourners. Stands to reason!�
“I don’t anticipate any serious results, except in the case of Sergeant Donohoe,� the Assassin said, with a worried look in his usually cheerful countenance.
“Donohoe down again. Poor devil! I’m sorry to hear it!� The Chief tugged at the ends of the great white moustache and looked grave.
“Only yesterday,� said the Senior Major, “I thought him looking about as fit as a man needs to be. He told me about Juxon’s engagement to his daughter, and went off as pleased as Punch——�
“To drink their healths,� interpolated the Assassin.
“Hah! That’s about it,� grumbled the Chief. “Well, I shall go round and look Donohoe up presently. Can’t afford to lose my Senior Color-Sergeant, you know, don’t you know!� Sir Alured frowned savagely, and cleared his throat with ominous vigor.
“You’ll find him pretty low down,� said the Assassin, “and I fancy Father Haggarty will be on duty. They’d sent for him before I came away.�
“Is it as bad as that?� said the Senior Major, and there was a moment’s silence, broken by a clinking step on the stone flags outside and a respectful knock on the glass door.
“A ’ospital horderly, sir,� said the passage orderly to Major Rufford, “with Color-Sergeant Donohoe’s respectful duty, and would you mind the trouble of steppin’ over and hearin’ somethin’, sir, wot ’e ’as to say? It’s Ward C., and a case of perforation—and, beggin’ your pardon, sir, there ain’t much time to lose.�
“Of course I’ll come! Say, at once!� Major Rufford lumbered up out of his chair, emptied the office kitten out of his undress cap, took his cane, which the office puppy had been chewing, and went.
“Donohoe’s wife was Rufford’s girl’s foster-mother, you know, don’t you know!� said Sir Alured. “There’s not more than a month’s difference between Peggy Donohoe and Emmie Rufford in age. When they were babies I’ve seen ’em sleepin’ in the same cradle; and dee me if I knew which of ’em was which, though I suppose their mothers did. Not that Rufford’s poor wife was over and above devoted to her babies. Odd now if the little beggars had got mixed up somehow, and Donohoe had sent for Rufford with the object of easin’ his conscience before he gave up the number of his mess.�
“Oh, that’s all Gilbert and Sullivan!� said the Assassin, getting up. “Such things don’t happen in real life, Colonel, and I’m going back to the hospital.�
“You think not? Differ with you there. Walk over with you, if you’ve no objection.� And the Chief and the Assassin followed in the wake of Major Rufford, who had only a moment before received point-blank and at short range from Sergeant Donohoe’s puffy blue lips—parted for easier passage of the slow, painful breaths that were taken with such agony—the second overwhelming surprise of his life.
For Sir Alured’s stray shot had registered a bull’s-eye. Donohoe, conscious that the grim messenger who had beckoned and passed by so many times—under the heights of Jagai, in the clammy Burmese hill jungles, amid the muddy swamps of West Africa, or the karroo scrub or grass veldt of the South—meant business on this occasion—had given up the secret less hidden than forgotten for many years. Many years since, according to her own confession, faltered out to the Sergeant upon her dying bed, the pretty young wife of Private Donohoe, urged by the promptings of motherly love, or incited, as Father Haggarty would have said, by the temptation of the Devil, arrayed her own nursling in the long-tailed cambric robe with insertion of Valenciennes, properly appertaining to the foster-babe; enduing the said foster-babe, namely Emmeline, infant daughter of Captain and Mrs. Rufford, not only with the abbreviated cotton frock which was the birthright of a Donohoe, but with all the privileges appertaining to a daughter of the rank and file; including a share in the Christmas tree and bran-pie diversions annually given under the patronage of the Colonel’s wife and other ladies of the Regiment—including her own mother.
“Don’t say it, Donohoe,� pleaded the bewildered Major, sitting on the foot of Donohoe’s cot-bed, holding the rigid hand, and shaken by the throes that were rending the Sergeant’s soul from the Sergeant’s body. “It’s an idea you’ve got into your head—nothing more! She—your wife—never changed the babies.... For God’s sake, man, say you know she didn’t!�
But Father Haggarty’s kindly, pitying look had in it knowledge, religiously kept sacred, now freed by voluntary confession from the sacramental seal. He held the Crucifix to Donohoe’s livid lips, and they moved, and a living voice came forth as from a sepulchre:
“She did ut. Sure enough she did ut; but for the right rayson why, sorr, I’m yet asthray. For wan thing—herself was a poor hard-workin’ woman—an’ the choild would be wan if ut lived. ’Twas ten years she carried the saycret—a mortial weight for a wake crayture, an’ a Prodesdan’ at that, wid no relief av clargy—and it wore her to the grave. On her dyin’ bed she confessed ut to me. I had my thoughts av makin’ a clane breast, and then—wurra! ’twas the divil at my elbow biddin’ me whisht or I’d lose my Peggy that was the pride av me eyes an’ the joy av me harrut. An’ I held off from Father Haggarty, till I could hould no longer. That was six Aysthers back; and—‘Tell the truth,’ says his Reverence, ‘or you’ll get no more of an absolution from me, me fine man, than Micky-would-you-taste-it?’ An’ at that I stiffened me upper lips an’ riz from me marra bones an’ wint me way. But the Hand is on me now, an’ I’ve made my paice wid Thim above; an’ I’d be glad you’d send for my Peggy to be afther biddin’ her ould dada good-bye—more by token she’s your Miss Emmeline by rights, and not my purty Peggy at all, at all!�