LXXI
The door was thrown open by an Orderly Sergeant during the progress of this, Mrs. Joshua’s first meal in Barracks, and a gruff bellow of “Attention!” caused a cessation of the clashing of knives, and a general uprising about the table heralded the entrance of the Officer for the Day. He was a blushing subaltern, fair-haired and nicely-mannered, who said a pleasant word of welcome to Mrs. Joshua, and, being preceded out of the room by the Sergeant, earned a favorable comment from Mrs. Geogehagan by not forgetting to shut the door.
After dinner the men adjourned to the Canteen for malt liquor, and the women strolled out, or gossiped among themselves. Tea-time meant for nearly all of them a snack of bread and cheese, washed down with beer—the fragrant leaf being eight shillings a pound in those days. Yet Moggy Geogehagan never failed to dhraw a raking pot upon the fire-cheek. She would as soon go without duds, she proclaimed, as widout her dhrop av’ tay. To porther, consumed in the pewter pots with a cauliflower head on, Moggy was, as was her Jems, exceedingly addicted. Sometimes under the influence of the beverage the worthy couple quarreled. And upon these occasions—probably feeling the need of maintaining herself in an upright position—the Corporal’s huge helpmeet would ask him for the loan of his ear.
Helping to undress, wash and tuck the children into their truckle beds, and washing-basket cradles, gave the young wife quite a homelike feeling. It was at Roll-Call—when every trooper not on duty stood to his bed and answered to his name—that the cheeks of Sarah’s ex-dairymaid began to tingle and burn.
She had screened off her bed and her husband’s with an old curtain and her shabbiest shawl, by the aid of clothes-line and corking-pins, nails and hammer.... Now, when the Sergeant had followed the officer out, and Josh—having been warned for First Relief of the Guard—had hurriedon his greatcoat, belt, and pouches,—taken his lance, sword, sling-carbine, plumed cap and gloves from the iron shelf and the hooks in the wall immediately above the bed-head,—stuffed a hunk of bread into his pocket, kissed her and jingled out with another man detailed for duty—it dawned on Nelly—silent in the midst of all these women and their men—who laughed, quarreled, kissed, sang or cursed freely and unrestrainedly, and without the slightest regard for the convenience of their neighbors or the feelings of the diffident stranger—that she and Josh had got to go to bed to-night, and every night for years to come, in the midst of this deafening din; under all these curious, or indifferent or evil eyes....
You are to imagine the two great foul-smelling tubs brought in—and the imperative trumpet-call “Lights out!” turning the perpendicular crowd into a horizontal one—the smelly, noisy gaslit hell—for it seemed nothing less to Nelly—into another of stifled laughter and whispered words ... of blackness, and stench, and worse.... You may suppose the homely domestic Virtues ranged side by side with the fouler vices on the huckaback-sheeted, brown-blanketed, straw-stuffed palliasses. Be a little sorry for the country girl, accustomed to retire at curfew—rung even to this day in remote English villages—with her flat candle-stick to her clean and quiet chamber over the great farm kitchen; and sleep in lavender-smelling linen, lulled by the rush of the Drowse under its three bridge-arches, unawakened by the crying of the hunting owls as they moused along the rick-eaves and raided the sparrows’ nests....
The great tubs were not the only things that reeked in the long, stuffy, vile-smelling room. Things were said that scalded the ears of the young wife, things were done of which she had never dreamed....
If she had had her man’s strong arm about her, she would have hidden her face in his breast, and, with his hard hand covering her little ears, have sobbed herself to sleep. But she was alone—in a void of dreadful darkness, populous with goblins hideous and grim.... Realizing this, and being well advanced upon the road that ends in a full cradle or empty arms, an hysterical access seized the poor young thing.
Her sobs, her cries and writhings—for strange, sharp, piercing pangs began to be added to the mere mental tortures—at length attracted the attention of those who waked, and roused those who snored.... Iron bedsteads creaked, relieved of heavy bodies—a candle-end flared in a lantern at the Corporal’s end of the room.... The stalwart figure of Moggy Geogehagan, arrayed in an ancient watch-coat, with her head tied up in a red-spotted handkerchief, and a blue yarn stocking tied round her neck—a certain cure for cowlds!—was illuminated by the candle’s yellow flicker, demanding to be inforrumed av the rayson av the outrajis hullaballoo?
Receiving no reply, the indomitable Moggy strode to the quarter whence the crying came. You saw her lift the hanging shawl and disappear behind its meager screen. From within her voice proceeded, pitched in a key less raucous than was usual:
“’Tis her Woman’s Hour that has come too soon upon the poor young crayture!... Let a brace av dacent women that are mothers, come quickly widin to me here!”
Ah! they were no longer troll-wives, grim female goblins of a strange nocturnal underworld! With one touch of the magic wand of Sympathy, brandished in her big red fist, did Moggy Geogehagan transform them into beings of warm human flesh and blood.
They left their beds and gathered round the flimsy tent of shawl and counterpane that housed the timid sufferer. Brawny women and scrawny women, little women and big women; women half-naked and not at all ashamed; women who habitually retired to rest as fully clothed as any Boer’svrouw. Pity and Compassion, hidden in these rough natures as silver in lead, or gold in quartz, or the ruby in its rough brown matrix of corundum, came shining to the light. The sheep with the goats, the “dacent” with the disreputable—they vied with each other in doing what they could. Even Pink Bonnet rose to the emergency, vindicating her oft-vociferated claim to be a woman, after all....
There was a gaunt bare whitewashed room with a rusty stove and a double row of moldy pallets in it, that was termed—with irony none the less grim because unconscious—the Barrack Hospital. No place was set apart where thesoldier’s wife might be tended in sickness, or bring forth her babe in peace; but thanks to Moggy Geogehagan and the two dacent women, and the rest that made a living wall of themselves between the poor young mother and the strange male eyes she dreaded so—the pale, rainy dawn that climbed over the high spiked walls of Spurham Cavalry Barracks, brought with it a new young life.
Thus Joshua Horrotian, coming back, yawning and shivering, at the expiration of his allotted term of hours On Guard, was met upon the threshold of the troop-room by the lady of the villa near the fireplace, big with news that made him stare.
“’Tis a grand boy, God bless it!—though he kem before he was joo, bedad!” trumpeted Mrs. Geogehagan, opening a chink in the clean, but yellowed flannel petticoat that had something that squirmed inside....
“And God bless you for a good woman, Mrs. Geogehagan!” stammered Joshua Horrotian. He added: “But oh! my poor girl! To ha’ gone through her trial under the eyes of a crowd o’ strangers, was cruel hard on her!”
“Hutt!” said Moggy scornfully, hushing and rocking the baby. “’Tis as well to get used to the worrust at firrust. What’s natheral can’t be desprit,” she added, quoting a favorite proverb of her land. “And she has sinse, and pith in her, begob she has! ‘Scrame out!’ I sez to her in the nick of the danger—‘if ye’d ever rise from that bed, scrame out, and not in!’ And scrame she did till the hearers blessed themselves. Pass me your arrums to rack, an’ take the child!”
But Josh, looking dubiously at the sleeve of his great-coat, whereon the lice of the guardroom crawled, hesitated to obey....
“Phyaugh!” said Moggy, with a toss of the head—adorned with the red-spotted handkerchief—that brought a quantity of coarse black hair, mightily resembling the tail of her husband’s charger—tumbling down her back. “What matter for the like av thim ginthry! All theweeneenasks is an honust man for his dadda, and a dacent young crayther for his mammy—such as her widin there,”—she jerked her head towards the distant end of the troop-room—“wid a breast av milk to bate the Queen’s” (who was popularly understood just then to be rearing a royal bantling after the natural method). “Hould out yourhan’s, I bid ye,” commanded the golden woman, “and take and bless your son!”
Joshua obeyed, for she would have cried herrings upon him in another minute.... And as he took the squirming bundle, he sniffed, and something splashed upon the yellow flannel petticoat. But Moggy had turned her back on him, and was racking the arms away.