For Fortune and Glory. Lewis Hough
A fire may not actually require coals, yet you may put some on to keep it going; so it is with a gentleman’s stomach. You may take ham to appease hunger, or you may take it to prevent the obtrusion of that vulgar sensation. Not that I object to helping you fellows. The carving of ham is an art, a fourpenny piece representing the maximum of thickness which the lean should obtain. With a carving-knife and fork this ideal is not too easy of attainment, but with these small blunt tools it requires a first-rate workman to approach it. Now this slice, which I sacrifice on the altar of friendship, is, I regret to say, fully as thick as a shilling.”
At this moment a little boy, Kavanagh’s fag, came into the room bearing a muffin on a toasting-fork.
“Devereux!” said Kavanagh, severely, “do you know what Louis the Fourteenth of France said when his carriage drew up, as he stepped outside his front door?”
“No.”
“He said, ‘I almost had to wait!’ Now I, too, say to you that my tea is poured out, my ham cut, and I almost had to wait. Not quite, happily not quite, or the consequences to you would have been—terrible!”
The little boy did not look very frightened, in spite of the tone in which the last word was uttered. Kavanagh had never been known wilfully to hurt anything weaker than himself in his life. As he was tall and strong, this is saying a great deal.
The two other fags grinned; one of them filled up the tea-pot, and then Strachan said “Go!” and all three lower boys vanished in a twinkling to prepare their own teas.
“We shall not have many more teas together,” said Forsyth.
“No, but we may dinners,” replied Strachan.
“Suppose we all get into the same regiment.”
“The job is to get into any regiment at all,” said Kavanagh. “There is that abominable examination to be got over. Awfully clever and hard reading fellows get beaten in it every time, I can tell you.”
“Well, but I believe it is easier through the Militia than direct into Sandhurst, is it not? And that is the way you and I are going to try. At any rate, then we can go into the same Militia regiment, and that will give us two trainings, besides preliminary drills, and so forth, to have some fun together. And Forsyth must come in too.”
“I have not quite made up my mind to go into the army, or rather to try for it, at all yet,” said Forsyth. “It seems such a waste of time to sap for it, and then be sold after all. I can never do half so well as I fairly ought in an examination, because I take so long to remember things I know quite well, even if I have plenty of time to think them out. I can learn, but I can’t cram, so I fear I should never be in it.”
“Oh, have a shy, man; it is only going in for something else if you fail. And there is no life like the army if you succeed.”
“If we fail, we fail. ‘But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail,’ ” quoted Kavanagh.
“Well, it is very tempting; perhaps I shall try,” said Forsyth.
“Look here, then,” said Strachan, “there are two vacancies amongst the sub-lieutenants in the fourth battalion of the Blankshire, and my father is a friend of the Colonel. I am to have one, and I have no doubt you, Kavanagh, will get the other. There is almost sure to be another vacancy before the next training, and if there is, don’t you think your friends would let you leave Harton at once, and take it? Then you could serve one training this year, and another next year, and be ready to go in for the Competitive at the same time that we do.”
“Thanks, old fellow,” said Forsyth. “I will talk it over with my people when I go home at Easter, and will let you know as quickly as I can.”
“That is settled then. Oh, we won’t say good-bye yet awhile.”
“It is a strange thing,” said Kavanagh, who, having finished his tea, had tilted his chair so that his back leaned against the wall, while his feet rested on another chair, less for the comfort of the position, than to afford him an opportunity of admiring his well-cut trousers, his striped socks, and his dandy shoes; “it is a strange thing that there should only be one career fit for a fellow to follow, and that it should be impossible for a fellow to get into it.”
“It sounds rather like a sweeping assertion that, doesn’t it?” observed Strachan, who was helping himself to marmalade.
“That is because you do not grasp the meaning which I attach to the word fellow. I do not allude to the ordinary mortal, who might be a lawyer, or a parson, or a painter, or fiddler, or anything, and who might get any number of marks in an examination. I mean by fellows, the higher order of beings, who are only worth consideration; I do not define them, because that is impossible; you must know, or you mustn’t know, according to your belonging to them or not. Anyhow, there they are, and everything and everybody else is only of value so far as he, she, or it is conducive to their comfort and well-being. For them the army is the only fit profession, and only a few of them can get enough marks to enter it.”
“Am I one of these extra superfines?” asked Strachan.
“You may be, perhaps, if you don’t eat too much marmalade.”
“Come, you are pretty fond of jam yourself, Kavanagh,” cried Forsyth.
“Well, yes; we all have our little weaknesses.”
“That reminds me,” said Strachan, turning round and poking the fire. “Our school career is drawing to a close, and I have never made my confession. I committed a crime last November which I have never owned, which no one suspects, but which weighs, whenever I think of it, on my conscience.”
“Unburden,” said Kavanagh.
“Well, then, you may remember that the weather was very mild up to the seventh of the month.”
“Don’t; but grant it. Go ahead.”
“On the eighth of November it grew suddenly colder, and I got out my winter things, and in the afternoon I changed. Having done so, I put my pencil in the right-hand waistcoat pocket. There was something round and hard there—a lozenge? No, a shilling, which had remained there ever since I changed my winter clothes in the spring. Now at that time we were reduced to anchovy paste for breakfast, and our bare rations for tea. Money was spent, tick was scarce, stores were exhausted. Faithful to a friendship which has all things in common. I went out to Dell’s and bought a pot of apricot jam for tea, the time for which had arrived. As ill-luck would have it, both you fellows were detained at something or another—French, I rather think. I had to go to my tutor myself at seven, so I could not wait, and began my tea alone. Well, the jam was good, very good, hanged good; I never ate such jam! Had I had quite a third of it? Not quite, perhaps; I gave myself the benefit of the doubt. But, then, the gap looked awful. Happy thought! I would turn it out into a saucer, and you might take it for a sixpenny pot. After all, not expecting any, you would be pleased with that. But it looked rather more than a sixpenny pot, so I had a bit more to reduce. And then—you would not come, and you knew nothing about it. Why make two bites of a cherry? I finished it, threw the pot out of window, and held my tongue. But oh! Next day, when Kavanagh received his weekly allowance, and laid it out in treacle and sprats for the public good, I did indeed feel guilty.”
“But you ate the sprats and treacle all the same, I expect.”
“I did. I would not shirk my punishment, and flinch from the coals of fire which were heaped on my head. I even enjoyed them. But my conscience has been very sore, and feels better now than it has done for a long time.”
“You have not got absolution yet,” said Forsyth.
“Not by long chalks,” cried Kavanagh. “Jam! And apricot of all jams. If you really want to wipe out the crime you must make restitution.”
“Gladly; but would not that be difficult?”
“Not at all; you can do it in kind. At compound interest