The Collected Works of P. C. Wren: Complete Beau Geste Series, Novels & Short Stories. P. C. Wren
what Squadron are you drafted?" he asked.
"To the Second, Sergeant," I replied innocently.
"And that's the worst news I have heard this year," was the reply. "I hoped you would be in the Third. I'd have had you put in my own peloton. I have a way with aristocrats and Volontaires, and macquereaux. . . ."
"I did my best, Sergeant," I replied truthfully.
"Tais donc ta sale gueule," he roared, and turning into the Guard-Room, bade a trooper do some scavenging work by removing me and taking me to the Office of the Sergeant-Major of the Second Squadron.
I followed the trooper, a tall fair Norman, across the great parade-ground, now alive with men in stable-kit, carrying brooms or buckets, wheeling barrows, leading horses, pumping water into great drinking-troughs, and generally fulfilling the law of their being, as cavalrymen.
"Come along, you gaping pig," said my guide, as I gazed around the pleasing purlieus of my new home.
I came along.
"Hurry yourself, or I'll chuck you into the manure-heap, after the S.S.M. has seen you," added my conducting Virgil.
"Friend and brother-in-arms," said I, "let us go to the manure-heap at once, and we'll see who goes on it. . . . I don't know why you ever left it. . . ."
"Oh--you're one of those beastly bullies, are you?" replied the trooper, and knocked at the door of a small bare room which contained four beds, some military accoutrements, a table, a chair, and the Squadron Sergeant-Major, a small grey-haired man with an ascetic lean face, and moustache of grey wire, neatly clipped.
This was a person of a type different altogether from Sergeant Blüm's. A dog that never barked, but bit hard, Sergeant-Major Martin was a cold stern man, forceful and fierce, but in manner quiet, distant, and almost polite.
"A Volontaire!" he said. "A pity. One does not like them, but such things must be. . . ."
He took my papers, asked me questions, and recorded the answers in the livret or regimental-book, which every French soldier must cherish. He then bade the trooper conduct me to Sergeant de Poncey with the bad news that I was to be in his peloton.
"Follow me, bully," said the trooper after he had saluted the Sergeant-Major and wheeled from the room. . . .
Sergeant de Poncey was discovered in the exercise of his duty, giving painful sword-drill to a punishment-squad, outside the Riding School. He was a handsome man who looked as though life held nothing for him but pain. His voice was that of an educated man.
The troopers, clad in canvas uniform and clogs, looked desperately miserable.
They had cause, since they had spent the night in prison, had had no breakfast, and were undergoing a kind of torture. The Sergeant would give an order, the squad would obey it, and there the matter would rest--until some poor devil, sick and half-starved, would be unable to keep his arm, and heavy sword, extended any longer. At the first quiver and sinking down of the blade, the monotonous voice would announce:
"Trooper Ponthieu, two more days salle de police, for not keeping still," and a new order would be given for a fresh form of grief, and another punishment to the weakest.
Well--they were there for punishment, and they were certainly getting it.
When the squad had been marched back to prison, Sergeant de Poncey attended to me. He looked me over from head to foot.
"A gentleman," said he. "Good! I was one myself, once. Come with me," and he led the way to the quartiers of the Second Squadron, and the part of the room in which his peloton slept.
Two partitions, some eight feet in height, divided the room into three, and along partitions and walls were rows of beds. Each bed was so narrow that there was no discomfort in eating one's meals as one sat astride the bed, as though seated on a horse, with a basin of soupe before one. It was thus that, for a year, I took all meals that I did not have at my hotel.
At the head of each bed hung a cavalry-sword and bag of stable-brushes and cleaning-kit; while above each were a couple of shelves bearing folded uniforms covered with a canvas bag on which was painted their owner's matricule number. Crowning each edifice was a shako and two pairs of boots. Cavalry carbines stood in racks in the corners of the room. . . . As I stared round, the Sergeant put his hand on my arm.
"You'll have a rough time here," he said. "Your only chance will be to be rougher than the time."
"I am going to be a real rough, Sergeant," I smiled. I liked this Sergeant de Poncey from the first.
"The worst of it is that it stays, my son," replied Sergeant de Poncey. "Habit becomes second nature--and then first nature. As I told you, I was a gentleman once; and now I am going to ask you to lend me twenty francs, for I am in serious trouble. . . . Will you?"
"No, Sergeant," I said, and his unhappy face darkened with pain and annoyance. "I am going to give you a hundred, if I may. . . . Will you?"
"You'll have a friend in me," was the reply, and the poor fellow positively flushed--I supposed with mingled emotions of gratitude, relief and discomfort.
And a good friend Sergeant de Poncey proved, and particularly valuable after he became Sergeant-Major; for though a Sergeant-Major may not have power to permit certain doings, he has complete power to prevent Higher Authority from knowing that they have been done. . . .
A Corporal entering the room at that minute, Sergeant de Poncey called him and handed me over to him with the words:
"A recruit for your escouade, Lepage. A Volontaire--but a good fellow. Old friend of mine. . . . See?"
The Corporal saw. He had good eyesight; for the moment Sergeant de Poncey was out of earshot, he added:
"Come and be an 'old friend' of mine too," and led the way out of the quartiers, across the great barrack-square, to the canteen.
Cheaply and greasily handsome, the swarthy Corporal Lepage was a very wicked little man indeed, but likeable, by reason of an unfailing sense of humour and a paradoxical trustworthiness. He had every vice and would do any evil thing--except betray a trust or fail a friend. Half educated, he was a clerk by profession, and an ornament of the city of Paris. Small, dissipated and drunken, he yet had remarkable strength and agility, and was never ill.
In the canteen he drank neat cognac at my expense, and frankly said that his goodwill and kind offices could be purchased for ten francs. I purchased them, and, having pouched the gold piece and swallowed his seventh cognac, the worthy man inquired whether I intended to jabber there the entire day, or go to the medical inspection to which he was endeavouring to conduct me.
"This is the first I have heard of it, Corporal," I protested.
"Well, it won't be the last, Mr. Snipe, unless you obey my orders and cease this taverning, chambering and wantonness," replied the good Lepage. "Hurry, you idle apprentice and worthless Volontaire."
I hurried.
Pulling himself together, Corporal Lepage marched me from the canteen to the dispensary near by.
The place was empty save for an Orderly.
"Surgeon-Major not come yet, Corporal," said the man.
Lepage turned upon me.
"Perhaps you'll let me finish my coffee in peace another time," he said, in apparent wrath, and displaying sharp little teeth beneath his waxed moustache. "Come back and do your duty."
And promising the Orderly that I would give him a cognac if he came and called the Corporal from the canteen as soon as the Surgeon-Major returned, he led the way back.
In the end, I left Corporal Lepage drunk in the canteen, passed the medical examination, and made myself a friend for life by returning and getting the uplifted warrior safely back to the barrack-room