exclusiveness, but sought every legitimate opportunity of united companionship, and formed a "mess" of eight at a table which just held that number, and on a couple of benches each of which exactly fulfilled the slang expression "room for four Dragoons on a form".
It was their great ambition to avoid the reproach of earning the soubriquet "gentleman-ranker," a term that too often, and too justly, stinks in the nostrils of officer, non-commissioned officer, and man (for, as a rule, the "gentleman-ranker" is a complete failure as a gentleman and a completer one as a ranker).
To prove a rule by a remarkably fine exception, these eight were among the very smartest and best troopers of one of the smartest and best Corps in the world—and to Damocles de Warrenne, their "Society of the Knights of the dirty Square Table" was a Rock and a Salvation in the midst of a howling sea of misery—a cool pool in a searing branding Hell.
Trooper Bear's brief nap appeared to have revived him wonderfully.
"Let us, like the Hosts of Midian, prowl around this happy Sabbeth eve, my dear," quoth he to Dam, "and, like wise virgins, up and smite them, when we meet the Red-Caps…. No, I'm getting confused. It's they up and smite us, when we've nothing to tip them…. I feel I could be virtuous in your company—since you never offer beer to the (more or less) fatherless and widowed—and since I'm stony. How did you work that colossal drunk, Matty, when you came home on a stretcher and the Red-Caps said you 'was the first-classest delirious-trimmings as ever was, aseein' snakes somethink 'orrible,' and in no wise to be persuaded 'as 'ow there wasn't one underyer bloomin' foot the 'ole time'. Oh you teetotallers!"
Dam shuddered and paled. "Yes, let's go for as long a walk as we can manage, and get as far from this cursed place as time allows," he replied.
His hair was still short and horribly hacked from the prison-crop he had had as a preliminary to "168 hours cells," for "drunk and disorderly".
"I'll come too," announced the Honourable Bertie.
"Yes," chimed in Trooper Adam Goate, "let's go and gladden the eyes, if not the hearts of the nurse-maids of Folkestone."
"Bless their nurse-maidenly hearts," murmured Trooper Bear. "One made honourable proposals of marriage to me, quite recently, in return for my catching the runaway hat of her young charge…. Come on." And in due course the four derelicts set forth with a uniformity of step and action that corresponded with their uniformity of dress.
"Let's take the Lower Road," said Dam, as they reached the western limit of the front at Folkestone. "I fear we rather contaminate the pure social air of the Upper Road and the fashionable promenade."
"Where every prospect pleases and only man, in the Queen's uniform, is vile," observed Trooper Bear.
Dam remembered afterwards that it was he who sought the quiet Lower Road—and he had good reason to remember it. For suddenly, a fashionably dressed and beautiful young girl, sitting alone in a passing private victoria, stood up, called "Stop! Stop!" to the coachman, and ere the carriage well came to a standstill, sprang out, rushed up to the double file of soldiers, and flung her arms around the neck of the outside one of the front rank.
With a cry of "Oh, Dam! Oh, Dammy!"—a cry that mightily scandalized a serious-minded policeman who stood monumentally at the corner—she kissed him again and again!
Troopers Bear, Goate, and Little, halting not in their stride, glancing not unto the right hand nor unto the left hand, speaking no word, and giving no sign of surprise, marched on in perfect silence, until Trooper Bear observed to the world in general "The lady was not swearing. His name must be Dam—short for Damon or Pythias or Iphigenia or something which we may proceed to forget…. Poor old chappie—no wonder he's taking to secret drinking. I should drink, myself. Poor chap!" and Trooper Goate, heaving a sympathetic sigh, murmured also "Poor chap!"
But Trooper Little, once the Hon. Bertie Le Grand, thought "Poor lady!"
* * *
The heart of Damocles de Warrenne bounded within him, stood still, and then seemed like to burst.
"Oh, Lucille! Oh, darling!" he groaned, as he kissed her fiercely and then endeavoured to thrust her from him. "Jump into your carriage quickly. Lucille—Don't … Here …! Not here…. People are looking … You …! A common soldier…. Let me go. Quick…. Your carriage…. Some one may—"
"Let you go, darling …! Now I have found you…. If you say another word I'll serve you as you served the Haddock. I'll hang on to your arm right along the Leas. I'll hang round your neck and scream if you try to run away. This is poetic justice, darling. Now you know how our Haddock felt. No—I won't leave go of your sleeve. Where shall we go, dearest darling Dammy. Dare you drive up and down the Front with me in Amelia Harringport's sister's young man's mother's victoria? oh, my darling Dam…." and Lucille burst into happy tears.
"Go up that winding path and I'll follow in a minute. There will be secluded seats."
"And you'll bolt directly I leave go of you?… I—"
"No, darling, God knows I should if I were a man, but I can't, I can't. Oh, Lucille!"
"Stay here," cried the utterly fearless, unashamed girl to the unspeakably astounded coachman of the mother of the minor Canon who had the felicity of being Amelia Harringport's sister's young man, and she strode up the pathway that wound, tree-shaded, along the front of the gently sloping cliff.
In the utter privacy of a small seat-enclosing, bush-hidden half-cave, Damocles de Warrenne crushed Lucille to his breast as she again flung her arms around his neck.
"Oh, Lucille, how could you expose yourself to scandal like that; I ought to be hung for not taking to my heels as you came, but I could not believe my eyes, I thought I was going mad again," and he shivered.
"What should I have cared if every soul in the world who knows me had arranged himself and herself in rows and ranks to get a good view? I'd have done the same if Grumper had been beside me in the carriage. What is the rest of the World to me, beside you, darling?… Oh, your poor hair, and what is that horrid scar, my dearest? And you are a '2 Q.G.' are you, and how soon may you marry? I'm going to disappear from Monksmead, now, just like you did, darling, and I'm coming here and I'm going to be a soldier's wife. Can I live with you in your house in barracks, Dammy, or must I live outside, and you come home directly your drill and things are finished?"
Dam groaned aloud in hopeless bitterness of soul.
"Lucille—listen," said he. "I earn one-and tuppence a day. I may not marry. If you were a factory-girl or a coster-woman I would not drag you down so. Apart from that, I am unfit to marry any decent woman. I am—what you know I am…. I have—fits. I am not—sound—normal—I may go m…."
"Don't be a pure priceless Ass, darling. You are my own splendid hero—and I am going to marry you, if I have to be a factory-girl or a coster-woman, and I am going to live either with you or near you. You want looking after, my own boy. I shall have some money, though, when I am of age. When may I run away from Monksmead, darling?"
"Lucille," groaned the miserable man. "Do you think that the sight of you in the mire in which I wallow would make me happier? Can't you realize that I'm ruined and done—disgraced and smashed? Lucille, I am not sane at times…. The SNAKE … Do you love me, Lucille? Then if so, I beg and implore you to forget me, to leave me alone, to wait awhile and then marry Delorme or some sane, wholesome man—who is neither a coward nor a lunatic nor an epileptic. Lucille, you double and treble my misery. I can't bear it if I see you. Oh, why didn't you forget me and do the right and proper thing? I am unfit to touch you! I am a damned scoundrel to be here now," and leaping up he fled like a maddened horse, bounded down the slope, sprang into the road, nor ceased to run till he fell exhausted, miles away from the spot whereon he had suffered as he believed few men had done before.
And thus and thus we women live!