However, he was determined to follow in the footsteps of his ancestors, to serve his country in spite of her, and his Commission was certain and near. Meanwhile he endeavoured to be a first-class trooper, had his uniform made of officers’ materials in Bond Street by his father’s famous tailor, and “got the stick” with ease and frequency.
“We’re not all gilded popinjays (nor poppin’ bottles),” observed a young giant who called himself Adam Goate, and had certainly been one in the days when he was Eugene Featherstonthwaite. “All very well for you to come to the surface and breathe, seeing that you’ll be out of it soon. You’re having nothing but a valuable experience and a hardening. You’re going through the mill. We’ve got to live in it. What’s the good of our stirring everything up again? Dam-silly of a skinned eel to grow another skin, to be skinned again…. No, ‘my co-mates and brothers in exile,’ what I say is—you can get just as drunk on ‘four-’arf’ as on champagne, and a lot cheaper. Ask my honourable friend, Bear.”
(Trooper Bear gave a realistic, but musical hiccup.)
“Also, to the Philosopher, bread-and-dripping is as interesting and desirable prog as the voluble-varied heterogeny of the menu at the Carlton or the Ritz—’specially when you’ve no choice.”
“Hear, hear,” put in Dam.
“Goatey ol’ Goate!” said Trooper Bear with impressive solemnity. “Give me your hand, Philossiler. I adore dripping. I’ss a (hic) mystery. (No, I don’ want both hands,” as Goate offered his right to Bear’s warm embrace.) I’m a colliseur of Dripping. I understan’ it. I write odes to it. Yesh. A basin of dripping is like a Woman. ’Strornarillily. You never know what’s beneath fair surface…. Below a placid, level, unrevealing surface there may be—nothing … and there may be a rich deposit of glorious, stimulating, piquant essence.”
“Oh, shut up, Bear, and don’t be an Ass,” implored Trooper Burke (formerly Desmond Villiers FitzGerald) … “but I admit, all the same, there’s lots of worse prog in the Officers’ Mess than a crisp crust generously bedaubed with the rich jellified gravy that (occasionally) lurks like rubies beneath the fatty soil of dripping.”
“Sound plan to think so, anyway,” agreed Trooper Little (ci devant Man About Town and the Honourable Bertie Le Grand). “Reminds me of a proverb I used to hear in Alt Heidelberg, ‘What I have in my hand is best’.”
“Qui’ sho,” murmured Trooper Bear with a seraphic smile, “an’ wha’ I have in my ‘place of departed spirits,’ my tummy, is better. Glor’us mixshure. Earned an honest penny sheven sheparate times cleaning the ’coutrements of better men … ‘an look at me for shevenpence’ …” and he slept happily on Dam’s shoulder.
In liquor, Trooper Bear was, if possible, gentler, kinder, and of sweeter disposition than when sober; wittier, more hopelessly lovable and disarming. These eight men—the “gentlemen-rankers” of the Queen’s Greys, made it a point of honour to out-Tommy “Tommy” as troopers, and, when in his company, to show a heavier cavalry-swagger, a broader accent, a quiffier “quiff,” a cuttier cutty-pipe, a smarter smartness; to groom a horse better, to muck out a stall better, to scrub a floor better, to spring more smartly to attention or to a disagreeable “fatigue,” and to set an example of Tomminess from turning out on an Inspection Parade to waxing a moustache.