Читать книгу Disenchantment - C. E. Montague - Страница 11

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Perhaps, in another company or another battalion, some private of relative wealth has felt, in the strength of his youth and the heat of his zeal, that he wants more to do. He longs to get on with the job. So he guilelessly goes to his own sergeant-major and asks him if there is a chance of getting some lessons in bayonet-fighting anywhere in the town. The sergeant-major sizes him up with a stare. "You're a fine likely man," he says, "for a stripe." He stares harder. "Or three," he subjoins.

The gilded youth is confounded. He an N.C.O.! He would as soon have thought of being a primate. "I'll give you," the Old Army continues, "the lessons myself. It'll be twelve quid—for the lot." To reproduce the emphasis upon the last three words is beyond the resources of typography.

The gilded youth may feel a slight pricking in his thumbs. Still, there is no overt crook in the deal. The teaching is sure to be good. And he has the cash and an inexact sense of values. So he agrees. The senior man-at-arms expresses a preference for ready money. Agreed, too. After one lesson the tutor is frankly bored by his tutorial function. "Hang it," he says, "what's the sense of you and me sweating our 'oly guts out? You've paid, and you'll find I won't bilk you." Youth is mystified; feels it is getting somewhat short weight. But what are acolytes against high priests? Youth leaves it at that.

In two or three weeks the frustrated pupil is sent for by his frustrator. A man is wanted for Post Corporal, or even for Battalion Provost Sergeant. What would the gilded youth say to the job? On his saying nothing at first the sergeant-major, with swiftly rising contempt for such friarly hesitancy, recites the beauties of this piece of preferment. "Cushiest job in the 'ole outfit! Long as you're sober enough to stand up at the staff parade of a night, that's all there is to it. Where'd the crime be among you 'oly Christians?" (The almost fanatical abstention of the New Army from ordinary military crimes often gave some scandal to experts drawn from the Old. They regarded it with perplexity and suspicion. The phenomenon was really simple, the men being in panic-fear of getting left behind in England if their unit should suddenly be sent abroad.) While the gilded youth tries to explain, without a lapse from tact, that the ranks are good enough for himself he feels a regal scorn beat down on him like a vertical sun. A fulmination follows. "Then what the 'ell did you ever come to me for? 'Op off! Out of it!"

The youth retires feeling that he has somehow strayed into a black list. He talks it over with a friend. The friend, he finds, has heard something like it from somebody else. Ribald jibes are soon flying about—"Four pound a stripe!" "Stripes are ris' to-day!" "Corporals, three for a tenner!" The story goes that a little "Scotch draper," the worst drill in a section, has felt that in this newly revealed world his professional credit for tactful effrontery is at stake; he has bet a fiver that he will offer the bare market price of a recommendation for "lance-Jack" and bring the thing off; the enterprise has prospered and the architect of his own fortunes is wearing the stripe, spending his pound balance on the transaction, commanding his brethren, and enjoying his new dispensation from fatigues. The band of brothers begin to look at each other with some circumspection. They wonder. How far does the dirty work go? Who may not try it on next? And did not somebody say he had seen the stud pass between the contractor who emptied the swill-tubs and the sergeant-cook who filled them with half-legs of mutton? What was that shorter creed to which the sergeants' mess waiters said that the Regular sergeants always recurred in their cups—"Stick together, boys," and "Anything can be wangled in the army"?