Major Byfield was thus satisfactorily repressed—but only for the time. He had 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 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 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 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 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 encyclopædias 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. 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 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.’