The Making of a Novelist | Page 9

closed with him at once, and he led me with a stealthy seeming of
indifference into a back yard, where he put the statutory questions and
handed over the statutory shilling.
I had supposed that I should at once enter upon my military career, but,
to my surprise, I was ordered to report myself at the depot at St.
George's Barracks on the following day at noon. Failing this, I was
instructed that I should be held a rogue and vagabond, and should be
liable to a period of imprisonment I went on to dinner, and bore myself
there with a mysterious gloom, which, as I learned long afterwards,
gave rise to a good deal of conjecture. Next day I was sworn in in a
frowsy back room behind the Westminster Police Court, and learned
that I was now formally bound to the service of her Majesty for a term
of twelve years, my sole hope of escape being the payment of a sum of
thirty pounds as purchase-money.
My military ardour had been a little cooled already at the medical
examination, where, to my horrible embarrassment, I was made to strip
stark naked, and was inspected by an elderly gentleman in a pince-nez,
with half a dozen uninterested people looking on, amongst them two or
three louts in fustian who were awaiting their turn. I was put into a
variety of postures, all of which I felt to be ridiculous and humiliating;
and when this ordeal was over there came the swearing-in and a visit to
the depot canteen, where I received payment of a sum of seven and
sixpence and was introduced to some of the raw material of the fighting
forces of the nation.
I may say quite frankly that I did not like the raw material. The young
men who composed it were without exception vulgar and loutish. Their
language was absolutely unreportable, and they were all more or less

flushed with beer. I had been almost a total abstainer all my life, and
though I drank a little of it out of complaisance I thought the canteen
tack the nastiest stuff I had ever tasted The depot barrack-room in
which the recruits slept until the time of their deportation echoed
morning, noon, and night with unmeaning ribaldries and obscenities,
and was stale with the smoke of bad tobacco and the fumes of that most
indifferent beer. I learned that I was bound for Ireland, and that the
head-quarters of my regiment were at Cahir. One respectable old depot
sergeant took some interest in my quiet and isolation. 'You'll be out of
this lot soon,' he said, 'and you'll never see anything like it again. These
chaps'll learn manners when they join the colours; and you're lucky in
the regiment you're going to--there's no smarter in the service.'
I have made one or two uncomfortable journeys in my time, but I can
recall nothing quite so comfortless as the march with that ragged and
disreputable contingent along Piccadilly, across Hyde Park, down the
Edgware Road, and so on to Paddington Station. It was all very well for
the sore and rebellious heart to be singing inwardly, 'Yes, let me like a
soldier fall,' but this was a sordid beginning for military glory, and I
would sooner have been shot outright than I would have encountered
anybody I knew on that journey. I reached the station unobserved, so
far as I know, and was glad to hide myself in a third-class carriage, into
which the sergeant in charge of the party beckoned me. He was very
kind and friendly indeed, advising me in a score of ways suggested by
his own experience, and talking constantly with his hand upon my
shoulder. I had begun to think him quite a genuine good fellow, and my
heart was warming to him, when he let the cat out of the bag.
I was handsomely attired, and the morning suit I was wearing was
barely a week old. He was good enough to offer me ten shillings and a
rig-out for a scarecrow in exchange for it. I declined the friendly offer,
and the sergeant cooled. He condescended to accept a drink at Didcot
Junction; indeed, he did me the honour to ask for it; but when it was
consumed he ordered me into a carriage already fully occupied by half
a score of my fellow recruits, and in their society I finished the journey
to Bristol.

We put up at the Gloucester Barracks, which, as I understood, had once
been an hotel, and the escort sergeant, who had turned spiteful, set me
to work to carry coal upstairs.
This was my first experience of fatigue duty, and I was kept at it till I
was very fatigued indeed, and my smart summer