Soldiers Three - Part 2

But the notion of tampering with the army was, from the point of view of Tehama Street, an altogether sound one. There is no shadow of stability in the policy of an English Government, and the most sacred oaths of England would, even if engrossed on vellum, find very few buyers among colonies and dependencies that have suffered from vain beliefs. But there remains to England always her army. That cannot change except in the matter of uniform and equipment. The officers may write to the papers demanding the heads of the Horse Guards in default of cleaner redress for grievances; the men may break loose across a country town and seriously startle the publicans; but neither officers nor men have it in their composition to mutiny after the continental manner. The English people, when they trouble to think about the army at all, are, and with justice, absolutely assured that it is absolutely trustworthy. Imagine for a moment their emotions on realising that such and such a regiment was in open revolt from causes directly due to England’s management of Ireland. They would probably send the regiment to the polls forthwith and examine their own consciences as to their duty to Erin; but they would never be easy any more. And it was this vague, unhappy mistrust that the I. A. A. were labouring to produce.

“Sheer waste of breath,” said the second man after a pause in the council. “I don’t see the use of tampering with their fool-army, but it has been tried before and we must try it again. It looks well in the reports. If we send one man from here you may bet your life that other men are going too. Order up Mulcahy.”

They ordered him up — a slim, slight, dark-haired young man, devoured with that blind rancorous hatred of England that only reaches its full growth across the Atlantic. He had sucked it from his mother’s breast in the little cabin at the back of the northern avenues of New York; he had been taught his rights and his wrongs, in German and Irish, on the canal fronts of Chicago; and San Francisco held men who told him strange and awful things of the great blind power over the seas. Once, when business took him across the Atlantic, he had served in an English regiment, and being insubordinate had suffered extremely. He drew all his ideas of England that were not bred by the cheaper patriotic prints from one iron-fisted colonel and an unbending adjutant. He would go to the mines if need be to teach his gospel. And he went, as his instructions advised, p. d. q. — which means “with speed” — to introduce embarrassment into an Irish regiment, “already half-mutinous, quartered among Sikh peasantry, all wearing miniatures of His Highness Dhulip Singh, Maharaja of the Punjab, next their hearts, and all eagerly expecting his arrival.” Other information equally valuable was given him by his masters. He was to be cautious, but never to grudge expense in winning the hearts of the men in the regiment. His mother in New York would supply funds, and he was to write to her once a month. Life is pleasant for a man who has a mother in New York to send him two hundred pounds a year over and above his regimental pay.

In process of time, thanks to his intimate knowledge of drill and musketry exercise, the excellent Mulcahy, wearing the corporal’s stripe, went out in a troopship and joined Her Majesty’s Royal Loyal Musketeers, commonly known as the “Mavericks,” because they were masterless and unbranded cattle — sons of small farmers in County Clare, shoeless vagabonds of Kerry, herders of Ballyvegan, much wanted “moonlighters” from the bare rainy headlands of the south coast, officered by O’Mores, Bradys, Hills, Kilreas, and the like. Never to outward seeming was there more promising material to work on. The First Three had chosen their regiment well. It feared nothing that moved or talked save the colonel and the regimental Roman Catholic chaplain, the fat Father Dennis, who held the keys of heaven and hell, and blared like an angry bull when he desired to be convincing. Him also it loved because on occasions of stress he was used to tuck up his cassock and charge with the rest into the merriest of the fray, where he always found, good man, that the saints sent him a revolver when there was a fallen private to be protected, or — but this came as an afterthought his own gray head to be guarded.

Cautiously as he had been instructed, tenderly and with much beer, Mulcahy opened his projects to such as he deemed fittest to listen. And these were, one and all, of that quaint, crooked, sweet, profoundly irresponsible and profoundly lovable race that fight like fiends, argue like children, reason like women, obey like men, and jest like their own goblins of the rath through rebellion, loyalty, want, woe, or war. The underground work of a conspiracy is always dull and very much the same the world over. At the end of six months — the seed always falling on good ground — Mulcahy spoke almost explicitly, hinting darkly in the approved fashion at dread powers behind him, and advising nothing more nor less than mutiny. Were they not dogs, evilly treated? had they not all their own and their national revenges to satisfy? Who in these days would do aught to nine hundred men in rebellion? Who, again, could stay them if they broke for the sea, licking up on their way other regiments only too anxious to join? And afterwards... here followed windy promises of gold and preferment, office and honour, ever dear to a certain type of Irishman.

As he finished his speech, in the dusk of a twilight, to his chosen associates, there was a sound of a rapidly unslung belt behind him. The arm of one Dan Grady flew out in the gloom and arrested something. Then said Dan —

“Mulcahy, you’re a great man, an’ you do credit to whoever sent you. Walk about a bit while we think of it.” Mulcahy departed elate. He knew his words would sink deep.

“Why the triple-dashed asterisks did ye not let me belt him’?” grunted a voice.

“Because I’m not a fat-headed fool. Boys, ‘tis what he’s been driving at these six months — our superior corp’ril with his education and his copies of the Irish papers and his everlasting beer. He’s been sent for the purpose, and that’s where the money comes from. Can ye not see? That man’s a gold-mine, which Horse Egan here would have destroyed with a belt-buckle. It would be throwing away the gifts of Providence not to fall in with his little plans. Of coorse we’ll mut’ny till all’s dry. Shoot the colonel on the parade-ground, massacree the company officers, ransack the arsenal, and then — Boys, did he tell you what next? He told me the other night when he was beginning to talk wild. Then we’re to join with the niggers, and look for help from Dhulip Singh and the Russians!”

“And spoil the best campaign that ever was this side of Hell! Danny, I’d have lost the beer to ha’ given him the belting he requires.”

“Oh, let him go this awhile, man! He’s got no — no constructiveness, but that’s the egg-meat of his plan, and you must understand that I’m in with it, an’ so are you. We’ll want oceans of beer to convince us — firmaments full. We’ll give him talk for his money, and one by one all the boys’ll come in and he’ll have a nest of nine hundred mutineers to squat in an’ give drink to.”

“What makes me killing-mad is his wanting us to do what the niggers did thirty years gone. That an’ his pig’s cheek in saying that other regiments would come along,” said a Kerry man.

“That’s not so bad as hintin’ we should loose off on the colonel.”

“Colonel be sugared! I’d as soon as not put a shot through his helmet to see him jump and clutch his old horse’s head. But Mulcahy talks o’ shootin’ our comp’ny orf’cers accidental.”

“He said that, did he?” said Horse Egan.

“Somethin’ like that, anyways. Can’t ye fancy ould Barber Brady wid a bullet in his lungs, coughin’ like a sick monkey, an’ sayin’, ‘Bhoys, I do not mind your gettin’ dhrunk, but you must hould your liquor like men. The man that shot me is dhrunk. I’ll suspend investigations for six hours, while I get this bullet cut out, and then — ‘”

“‘An’ then,” continued Horse Egan, for the peppery Major’s peculiarities of speech and manner were as well known as his tanned face; “‘an’ then, ye dissolute, half-baked, putty-faced scum o’ Connemara, if I find a man so much as lookin’ confused, begad, I’ll coort-martial the whole company. A man that can’t get over his liquor in six hours is not fit to belong to the Mavericks!’”

A shout of laughter bore witness to the truth of the sketch.

“It’s pretty to think of,” said the Kerry man slowly. “Mulcahy would have us do all the devilmint, and get clear himself, someways. He wudn’t be takin’ all this fool’s throuble in shpoilin’ the reputation of the regimint — ”

“Reputation of your grandmother’s pig!” said Dan.

“Well, an’ he had a good reputation tu; so it’s all right. Mulcahy must see his way to clear out behind him, or he’d not ha’ come so far, talkin’ powers of darkness.”

“Did you hear anything of a regimental coortmartial among the Black Boneens, these days? Half a company of ‘em took one of the new draft an’ hanged him by his arms with a tent-rope from a third-story verandah. They gave no reason for so doin’, but he was half dead. I’m thinking that the Boneens are short-sighted. It was a friend of Mulcahy’s, or a man in the same trade. They’d a deal better ha’ taken his beer,” returned Dan reflectively.

“Better still ha’ handed him up to the Colonel,” said Horse Egan, “onless — but sure the news wud be all over the counthry an’ give the reg’ment a bad name.”

“An’ there’d be no reward for that man — he but went about talkin’,” said the Kerry man artlessly.

“You speak by your breed,” said Dan, with a laugh. “There was never a Kerry man yet that wudn’t sell his brother for a pipe o’ tobacco an’ a pat on the back from a p’liceman.”

“Praise God I’m not a bloomin’ Orangeman,” was the answer.

“No, nor never will be,” said Dan. “They breed men in Ulster. Would you like to thry the taste of one?”

The Kerry man looked and longed, but forbore. The odds of battle were too great. “Then you’ll not even give Mulcahy a — a strike for his money,” said the voice of Horse Egan, who regarded what he called “trouble” of any kind as the pinnacle of felicity.

Dan answered not at all, but crept on tip-toe, with long strides, to the mess-room, the men following. The room was empty. In a corner, cased like the King of Dahomey’s state umbrella, stood the regimental Colours. Dan lifted them tenderly and unrolled in the light of the candles the record of the Mavericks — tattered, worn, and hacked. The white satin was darkened everywhere with big brown stains, the gold threads on the crowned harp were frayed and discoloured, and the Red Bull, the totem of the Mavericks, was coffee-hued. The stiff, embroidered folds, whose price is human life, rustled down slowly. The Mavericks keep their colours long and guard them very sacredly.

“Vittoria, Salamanca, Toulouse, Waterloo, Moodkee, Ferozshah, an’ Sobraon — that was fought close next door here, against the very beggars he wants us to join. Inkerman, The Alma, Sebastopol! ‘What are those little businesses compared to the campaigns of General Mulcahy? The Mut’ny, think o’ that; the Mut’ny an’ some dirty little matters in Afghanistan; an’ for that an’ these an’ those” — Dan pointed to the names of glorious battles — “that Yankee man with the partin’ in his hair comes an’ says as easy as ‘have a drink’... Holy Moses, there’s the captain!”

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