VC -- A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea | Page 3

man within
five miles that knows it. You mark my words, now, all of you. You'll
remember this night to the last day o' your lives. This is the 27th March,
this is. The twenty-seventh of March in the year of Our Lord eighteen
hundred and fifty-four. That's a date as will stick in your gizzards, my
hearties. It's a date as will stick in old England's gizzard, and in the
Czar of Rooshia's gizzard, and in the gizzard of Napoleon Three. And
you can lay your oath to that, because Jack Jervase told you.'
'Why, what's happened, Mr. Jervase?' asked the man who had spoken
earlier.
'Happened?' cried Mr. Jervase. 'Why, Her Gracious Majesty Queen
Victoria has sent a message to her Royal 'Ouses of Parliament to say as
she's declared war agen the Czar of all the Rooshias. And before a
month is over your heads, my lads, there'll be war amongst the Great
Powers of Europe, for the first time in eight-and-thirty years.'
The five men rose to their feet unconsciously in their excitement. They
were mere country-side clods, and knew as little of the rights and
wrongs of that great Eastern question which had overshadowed the
world so long, as the horses they drove about the heavy country lanes
or the flocks they herded. But they broke into a cheer.
The bringer of the news lifted a hand, and waved them into silence.
'You'll have the missus in to know what all that hullaballoo's about,' he
said, reprovingly: 'and I don't want to be bothered until I've made a
change. Now I'll tell you what it is, my lads. The Queen wants men,
and there isn't one of you that isn't fit to go a-soldiering. I just tell you
this--if any one of you, or the whole lot of you, see fit to take the
Queen's shilling I'll put a pound to it for bounty money. Now, you
needn't cheer again,' he added hastily.

As a matter of fact, none of his listeners showed any inclination to
cheer. War in the abstract was a thing to cheer about, but war in the
concrete--war with its possibilities--thus brought home to each
individual mind excited no enthusiasm.
'You think about that, my lads,' said the host, distributing a series of
smiling nods about him. 'Old Jack Jervase's day is over, or he'd be at it
again, and so I tell you. It's many and many a year now since I heard a
shot fired in anger, or since I stood on a ship's deck. But I've got the
heart for the work still, if I haven't got the figger. Heigh-ho,' he went on,
with a regretful moan, 'there's no room for a pottle-bellied, bald-headed
old coot like me atween the decks of a man o' war. But if I was
five-and-twenty years younger, why, God bless my soul, I shouldn't
hesitate a minute!'
The woman he had despatched immediately upon his entrance returned
at this instant and coughed behind her hand to indicate her presence.
'All ready, Mary?' said Mr. Jervase in a ringing and cheery voice.
'That's well. Don't forget what I've told you, lads: fine young chaps like
you ought not to desert their Queen and country in the hour of need. I'll
keep my promise. Any one of you as takes the sergeant's shilling can
claim a pound for bounty money from old Jack Jervase.'
So saying, he rolled, with a nautical gait, towards the door by which the
domestic had re-entered the room, and having reached the stairfoot, and
finding himself alone, he added, with a sudden snarl, 'I'd like to give
three of ye a chance of earning a wooden leg anyhow--coming into my
house and guzzling my best beer the very minute my back's turned on
ye.'
He found a cheerful fire blazing in his own room, and dry clothing laid
out before it. He began to undress, casting his coat into one corner of
the room, with a gesture of exasperation, and his waistcoat into another.
He tugged at his bootlaces angrily, muttering to himself meanwhile
mere scraps of speech in which the words 'beer,' and 'waste,' and
'guzzling beasts,' were audible. When he had stripped completely, he
gave himself a lusty towelling from head to foot, and then struggled

into the warm, dry raiment prepared for him. As at the completion of
his toilet he stood with a pair of stiff military brushes working at his
hair and whiskers, before a big cheval glass, he looked eminently
British for his day. The style is a little changing now, but the thick-set
sturdy figure, the full paunch, the blunt scowling features, the cold grey
eyes, the double chin, the firm yet sensual mouth, were all expressive
of his type. The suit of pilot