Major Vigoureux | Page 8

mind relieved, the Commandant walked off towards the Barracks, pausing on his way to pick up Miss Gabriel's antimacassar-waistcoat, which he had taken the precaution to leave outside the gate.
Three-quarters of an hour later he emerged in clean shirt and threadbare, but well-brushed, uniform, arrayed for Mr. and Mrs. Fossell's whist-party. As he passed the Garrison gate, Mrs. Treacher, who sometimes acted deputy for her husband, began to ring the six o'clock bell. He halted and waited for her to finish.
"Mrs. Treacher," he said, "can you tell me the price of flannel?"
"Flannel," answered Mrs. Treacher, "is all prices, according to quality."
"But I am talking of good ordinary flannel, fit to make up into a man's shirt."
"Then you couldn't say less than one-three-farthings, or one-and-a-ha'penny at the lowest."
"And how much would be required?"
"Good Lord!" said Mrs. Treacher. "As if that didn't all depend on the man!"
"I was thinking, Mrs. Treacher, to present your husband with one: that is to say, with the material, if you will not mind making it up."
Mrs. Treacher curtsied. "And I thank you kindly, sir, for 'tis not before he needs one, which, being under average size and the width just a yard, as you may reckon, he oughtn't to take more than three-and-a-half yards at the outside."
"Three-and-a-half at one-three-farthings--that makes--Oh, confound these fractions!" said the Commandant. "We'll make it four shillings, and you had best step down to Tregaskis' shop to-morrow and choose the stuff yourself." He counted out the money into Mrs. Treacher's hand, and left her curtseying. As he went, he jingled the few coins remaining in his breeches pocket. They amounted to two-and-seven-pence in all--and almost a week stood between him and pay-day.
CHAPTER III
THE COMMANDANT FINESSES A KNAVE
"I remember the Bartlemys perfectly," said Miss Gabriel, addressing the company as they sat around Mr. and Mrs. Fossell's dining-table and trifled with a light collation of cordial waters and ratafia biscuits--prelude to serious whist. "I carry them both in my mind's eye, though I must have been but a tiny child when he succumbed to apoplexy, and she left the Islands to reside with a married sister at Scarborough. Very poorly-off he left her. Somehow, our Commanding Officers have never contrived to save money--even in the old days, when the post was worth having."
Miss Gabriel said it lightly but pointedly, with a glance at the Commandant. The company stared at their plates and glasses. It was well-known that (as Mr. Rogers put it) Miss Gabriel "had her knife into" the patient man, and there were tongues that attributed her spitefulness to disappointment. Fifteen years ago, when Major Narcisse Vigoureux--no longer in his first youth, but still a man of handsome presence--had first arrived in the Islands to take over his command, Miss Gabriel was a not uncomely woman of thirty. Partis in the Islands are few, as you may suppose. He was a bachelor, she a spinster; she had money, and he position. What wonder, then, if the Islanders expected them to make a match of it?
For some reason, the match had never come off, and although she might convince herself that the simplest reason--incompatibility--was the true one, Miss Gabriel could hardly have been unaware that the women looked upon her as one who had missed her chance, and even blamed her a little--as women always will in such cases--in a conspiracy of sex acknowledging its weakness. Perhaps this made her defiant.
She was handling the Commandant truculently to-night.
"Of course," she continued, "even in those days the post--don't they say the same in England of a Deanery?--was looked upon as finishing a man's career. I don't know, for my part, the principle upon which the Horse Guards--it used to be the Horse Guards--sent Colonel Bartlemy down to us."
"By selection, ma'am," said the Commandant, still patiently, as she paused; "by selection among a number of applicants."
"I didn't want to be told that," snapped Miss Gabriel. "What I meant was, the Commander-in-Chief probably knew something of the man--had informed himself of something in his record--before sending him down to this exile."
"And a jolly good exile, too!" put in Mr. Rogers, heartily.
"It used to be," said Miss Gabriel. "This Colonel Bartlemy, for instance, was a coward. I've heard it told of him that once, during his command, a sort of mutiny broke out in the Barracks. It happened at a time when the newspapers were full of nonsense about France invading us by a sudden descent; and the noise, reaching him in the quarters where he lodged with his wife and one general maid-servant, put him in a terrible fright. He had fenced off these quarters of his for privacy, because Mrs. Bartlemy thought it would be a good deal better for the maid-servant; and they communicated with the Barracks by a staircase with a door of which he