Not having been at the storming in the Peninsula, I had retired to bed early.
The purchase system, however personally delightful, was undoubtedly a very cruel regulation. I myself within seven years passed over five men who had joined when I was two years old; but the injustice of it never struck me till on one occasion the junior major of a regiment in the same brigade, who had got his commission on the same day as I had, turned me out as subaltern of a guard. But he had not obtained this luck without risking “Yellow Jack,” for exchanging to a West India regiment and jumping from bottom to top in every grade by bribing the entire regiment was a thoroughly recognised arrangement by our amiable authorities. D’Arcy Godolphin Osborne was an exponent of this brilliant bare-backed (or bare-faced) vaulting, and despite being the brother of the Duke of Leeds was not an ideal field officer.
“Purchase” literally killed poor ’Gus Anson, brother of the Earl of Lichfield. With a constitution shattered since Lucknow, where he won the V.C., night after night found him arguing against its abolition in the House of Commons; and the almost nightly intimations I sent him, at his request, “that we had enough for Baccarat” did the rest, and I eventually saw the best and bravest of men on his death-bed at Dudley House.
CHAPTER II.
THE TOWER.
About this time all England was ringing with what was known as the “Trent affair”; 10,000 troops had been ordered to Montreal, of which a considerable portion were Guards, and so it devolved on certain line battalions to garrison London, and we were ordered to the Tower.
It was the regimental guest-night, and all the plate of which the regiment was so proud decked the table in the dark wainscoted room of the Mess House. In the middle of the table stood a centre-piece displaying the soldiers in the uniforms of the days of Marlborough, the Peninsular, and later on, when the hateful Albert Shako did duty as the headgear of British infantry; extending down each side were scrolls containing the names of brave men who had fallen with their faces to the enemy at Quebec, Quatre Bras, and the Redan, whilst flanking the massive trophy were silver goblets varying in size—from those that held a quart down to others of more modern dimensions, indicative of presentations on promotion, marriage, or “selling out.” It had, indeed, once been a custom for the last joined ensign to drain the largest tankard on his first appearance at mess; but that was in the days when four bottles under a man’s belt was deemed a reasonable amount, and before the Regent’s allowance enabled every one to consume nightly a half-glass of port or sherry free of expense.
The Colonel, as may be supposed, was in great form, each of his yarns exceeding in improbability the one preceding it. “Yes, gentlemen,” he was saying, “I remember my father saying how at Quatre Bras the regiment found itself confronted by the 88th French Infantry Corps, and he overheard the right-hand man of his company saying, as he bit off the end of his cartridge, ‘Jasus, boys, here’s a case—here we are opposite the French Connaught Rangers!’”
“I was saying, gentlemen,” the Colonel’s voice was here heard declaring, “that I shall never forget”—and then followed a tissue of fabrications every one had frequently heard before, but which nobody but the worthy old warrior for one moment believed.
Coffee and cigars had meanwhile made their welcome appearance, and as guests began to think of home, and others settled down to muff whist, the ante-room resumed the humdrum appearance so familiar to every one who can speak from experience.
By the irony of fate, also, the regiment was furnishing the guards on this special guest-night, a circumstance that claimed more than one punter; not satisfied with which, the field officer’s “roster” had apparently joined issue and requisitioned the old Major who, on these festive occasions was always a sure hand at loo, and who at the identical moment when he should have been “taking the miss,” was probably bellowing out “Grand Rounds,” to some distant guard in tones that belied his amiable genial disposition.