“We were now all rather doubtful about our new cornet, who, however, had plenty of money, and had come from one of our first public schools; and sure enough our suspicions proved to be correct—the cloven hoof had peeped out in the overladen plate of beef. The cornet proved to be the only son of a retired contract butcher, who had made a large fortune during the war, and had retired to the country and had tried to make his son a gentleman, but he couldn’t do it, sir; the plate of beef exposed him.”
These and other similar precepts were instilled into me by my old friend daring the time that I took my first practice under his tuition of testing the strength of my head versus the strength of his port wine, and I am happy to say that I gained the colonel’s approval one Saturday evening in an unexpected manner as follows:—
A party of four had been at dinner, all military men. We had sat over our wine a fair time, and, charmed with the conversation, I had done full justice to the port. The colonel then proposed a rubber of whist, at which game he was an adept, and required me to take a hand. I played a fair game of whist for a youngster, and so made up the fourth. Luckily I was on that night a good card-holder, and was the colonel’s partner, and we won. He was delighted, for his whole heart was in the game. When we broke up he gave me a pat on the back and said, “Shepard, I always thought well of you, but I never formed so high an opinion of your talents and power as to-night. You may talk about your examinations in Euclid and mathematics, for which a fellow is crammed like a parrot for months, as a test of a man’s brains and his fitness for a soldier; I think it’s nearly all bosh, and gives no fair test; but if I see a young man do what you’ve done to-night, that is, put a bottle of port under his waistcoat and afterwards play a quiet, steady rubber, and remember whether the twelfth or thirteenth card is the best, I know that fellow has a good head. I believe there is not one youngster in twenty can do this now-a-day. They are all weeds—haven’t the stamina and backbone they used to have—and the Englishman is degenerating to a great extent, I believe, in consequence of the inordinate use of tobacco.”
Daring the present half-year I had taken up cricket, and was very successful as a “fielder,” though my batting was not first-rate. I was good enough, however, to play in the Eleven against the Officers of the Artillery—a match we played each year—and made double figures in my score, and caught out two of the officers.
Although I was nearly always on leave from Saturday to Sunday for the “whole shay,” as it was termed, yet I on one occasion did not go. The result was that I had command of the first company at church-parade, and marched past on the barrack-field before going to church. Several times I had been in the ranks when we had marched past on Sundays, but this was the first time I had ever commanded the company. There was a great crowd to see us march past and to hear the band, and the company was praised for its steadiness. I remembered well my feelings as a schoolboy when I saw a cadet in a similar position to that I now occupied, and I regretted that I had not now the same delight in being where I was that I fancied formerly I should have. It was not a want of enthusiasm, for I had still plenty of that left; but I felt as if I were performing a mere act of business, and was more occupied in seeing that the ranks kept line and proper distance than I was in the thought of commanding the company.
Somehow I had grown to understand that hard work and thought were the means to all success, and that now, when I happened to be senior corporal, it was merely in consequence of others being absent, and that I had attained this position by hard work. I must confess I felt disappointed with myself, for I did not experience one-hundredth part of the pleasure I should have felt had it been possible to transfer me instantly from a schoolboy at Hostler’s to the position I now occupied.
One little incident, however, as we were marching off, did gave me temporary gratification. As I gave to the company the words “Right turn!” “Left wheel!” and we marched across the gravel to the chapel, I passed close to three of Mr Hostler’s masters, who were there with his boys. There was not a face among the boys I recognised. All had changed; but the masters I knew, and I saw they had pointed me out to the youngsters. For a moment the misery of my life at Hostler’s came across me, and a vivid remembrance of the sneering self-sufficiency of one of these tutors, as he tried to impress upon me that I was too stupid to ever learn mathematics. I muttered to myself “Pig-headed idiot!” as I recalled this man’s proceeding, and now noticed a sort of self-complacency in his manner as he was probably explaining to Hostler’s boys that he had trained me for Woolwich.
This my fifth half-year seemed to pass more quickly than a week did when I was a neux, and we again began to talk about examinations and our vacation. To me the final trial was now coming, for although we worked at various subjects in the practical class, yet the work did not count. There was no examination, and our relative positions in the batch were unaltered when once we joined the practical class.
I had succeeded in all the drawings I had done during the half-year, and had adopted a general polishing up in the various branches of study, for our position in the class for commissions was decided by the amount of marks we obtained as a total for all subjects.
Day passed after day, and it was within a fortnight of the examination when I received a letter from Mr Rouse, asking if I would come and pass Saturday and Sunday with him.