Chapter XXIII: The "maid and the Magpie."

I was immediately placed upright against the sergeant's pike, on the shaft of which were accurately notched the number of feet and inches which formed the standard height for recruits in his Majesty's Twenty First Foot. Though considerably below the required gage, as a growing lad, I passed the ordeal, and ere mid-day, with a few other aspirants for fame and Chelsea, was duly attested by a jolly, red-faced rector, who was a J.P. in that Riding of Yorkshire. Two guineas of bounty were then paid to me, and in the evening, with the sergeant, Corporal Mahoney, the drummers, &c., and a few more recruits, I found myself enthroned on a table at the "Maid and the Magpie," spending my newly-acquired pieces of gold with singular facility; and more likely to become a bibber than a Hannibal, as I strove to drown care and extract recklessness from brandy and tobacco.

A crowd of bumpkins and idlers filled the large wainscotted smoking-room of the old-fashioned inn, which Sergeant Drumbirrel had made his head-quarters; and as red-coats were seldom seen in the rural district of Compton Rennel, our redoubtable halberdier, who had all the _bonhommie_, acuteness, and confidence requisite for a complete recruiting sergeant, found himself acknowledged king of the company. He was a tall and handsome fellow, about forty years of age; his hair was already becoming grey, and his face lined by years of hard drinking and hard service in America and the tropics; and his staple subjects for conversation were his personal exploits in the fields of Mars and Venus,--stories in which he usually stood prominently forward,--thus: how, by following _his_ friendly hints, Burgoyne beat the French on the banks of the Hudson; and how on another occasion he bilked an innkeeper at Chatham; for he deemed one exploit quite as worthy of consideration as the other.

He knew all the tricks of the recruiting service; enabled recruits to pass the standard by false scalps and glued cork heels, and made no secret of his art before his auditors. While he imbibed and expressed a hearty contempt for all civilians; he deemed it quite as much his duty to trepan as to enlist them; thus, by his own account, he had brought many gallant fellows into his Majesty's service by deluding them into an exchange of clothes with him, taking care to leave a _shilling_ in one of the pockets; on the discovery of which, he desired the wearer to keep it in the king's name, and marched him straight to the nearest J.P. for attestation. He had freely proffered commissions, enlisting many as captains, colonels, and knights of the Bath and Garter; he had slipped "the shilling" into a bumpkin's pocket, or into his hand when shaking it, and then sworn in a whole vocabulary of oaths that it was given in the name of his Majesty.

From time to time, the health of the latter was drunk at my expense, with great vociferation and loyalty, the sergeant sitting the while at the head of a long bare table, armed with a huge Toby-tosspot jug (formed like a little squat man in boots, with a three-cocked hat, each angle of which was a mouth-piece); it was full of ruddy, foaming ale,--Yorkshire home-brewed.

"Are you wise," I whispered, "to let out all the secrets of your art before these fellows?"

"Wise, lad?" said he, "I never was wise, and 'tis too late to learn wisdom now; besides, what is the use of being wise? 'Tis better far to be jolly."

"But those who overhear you----"

"May go and be hanged," said he; "our beating order expires to-night, and to-morrow we march for Hull to join the regiment, and I don't care how soon we embark; for I begin to tire alike of barrack life, recruiting, and garrison duty."

"Hurrah! the sooner we embark the better," said I, with a shout; for now the fumes of liquor, tobacco, and the general odour of the room itself, were overpowering, while the noise, confusion, singing, quarrelling, and the voices of women lamenting the enlistment of sons, brothers, and lovers, made up a Babel, from which I could not escape, as Sergeant Drumbirrel was too old a soldier to trust a recruit for an instant out of his sight, until he was duly "turned over" to the staff at head-quarters.

"Oh, stay at home, my dear--dear son," exclaimed a poor old woman imploringly to a tipsy rustic, whose wide-awake hat was adorned by the tricoloured streamers of the gallant 21st; "stay at home with your old mother, who loves you so well, and do not go to the sodgering, leaving her to starvation and grief."

Though applied to another, these words sank deeply and bitterly into my own heart; but it was too late to retreat now. The bumpkin to whom she spoke tore off his gay cockade, and began to weep like a huge tipsy boy as he was.

"Here, you young devil, take a pull of this," said the sergeant, proffering his foaming jug. "Mother of Moses! wait, old lady, till you see your son in his red coat and captain's _epaulettes_. The first duke that has any live stock in the shape of scampering daughters will have him to dinner directly. Hurrah for the old 21st! Keep up your hearts, my boys, for here are the sinews of war!"

With these words he refreshed us all, by displaying a handful of guineas, which, however, were not his own, but the marching money of the whole party. This timely display silenced the regrets of all, save one young fellow, upon whose shoulder a very pretty girl hung, and wept bitterly.

"Is this your sweetheart?" asked the sergeant, whose rubicund visage expressed a curious combination of commiseration and disgust.

"Yes," replied the recruit angrily, for he now viewed our commander as his tempter and enemy.

"Well, our colonel does not approve of married men on foreign service, so you may as well transfer her to some one else."

"Tony--my dear Tony!" sobbed the girl.

"So you're in love, my girl," continued the sergeant; "get out of it as soon as you can, for your Tony is a fusilier now, and love rarely survives a change of quarters. I have done a little in the love-making way myself, and speak from experience."

"Love, like destiny, should be fixed, unchanging," said I, enthusiastically, as I thought of poor little Amy Lee.

"Desthiny," reiterated Mahony, our Irish corporal; "and what the divil's that?"

"Our fate in life."

"I've known what _fate_ were on the line o' march in Flanders, when my boots pinched--is it that ye mane?"

"Fate," said Drumbirrel, ponderingly--"don't know much about it. I know that every bullet has its billet--a saying we have in the army--and it comes pretty much to the same thing. But be jolly, youngsters, and you may all come in time to the _halbert_," he added, with a wink which made all the soldiers laugh, as his speech contained an allusion known to them alone.

"Thunder and blazes!" exclaimed Corporal Mahony "here is that unbelieving fifer ating mate on a Friday, like a heretical Protestant."

"Well, there's no fast to the _poteen_--glory be to God!" replied the fifer, who was his countryman; "so fire away, my boys, till the butt-end of the morning."

"Silence all!" commanded the sergeant, who seemed literally to live on tobacco-smoke and brandy-and-water; "silence for a song, or I'll knock the dominoes out of your jaws with my halbert--and, drummer, brace up, for an accompaniment."

With these words he struck up a rollicking barrack-room ditty of the day, in the prolonged "Tol-de-rol-lol" of which the whole party joined, and the drum was added, so that the din, with the clattering of jugs on the table, and iron heels on the floor, was tremendous.

Behold poor Will, just come from drill,
'Twas only last night I enlisted;
I sold my cart to pay the smart,
But money King George resisted!
I know not what my fate may be,
Yet think it mighty odd, sirs,
That a lad so trim and smart as me
Should be in the awkward squad, sirs!
Tolderol, lol, lol, &c.

Perhaps a recruit may chance to shoot
The great citizen Bonaparte, sirs--

Our halberdier, who had become considerably the worse of his potations, here became inarticulate; and would have fallen off his chair, but was recovered by Corporal Mahony (a prompt doctor on such occasions), who, in five minutes, sobered him by pouring down his throat a little tea, dashed with strong vinegar.

The society among which I was thrown sickened, and the drunken uproar almost deafened, me; thus I gladly retired to my pallet, in a miserable garret, which was allotted to the corporal and myself. Drumbirrel, having discovered, through the medium of his brandy-and-water, that the blowsy landlady was absolutely beautiful, lingered behind.

Overcome by the effects of his recent orgie, Mahoney soon dropped asleep, and I was left to my own thoughts.

So I was to be a soldier, after all! It seemed the immutable dictum of fate--of a destiny against which there was no contending; and by this almost atheistical sophistry (rather than by the pressing argument of necessity) I endeavoured for a time to stifle regret, and the stings of a conscience that upbraided me, for deserting my mother in her old age and my sister in her early youth.

But the die was cast, and thus I strove to find consolation in deeming myself a fatalist.

I knew that my mother would weep for me--yea, bitterly; and that how dear my desertion (the whole circumstances of which I might never be able to explain) cost her, would be known only to God and her own gentle heart; and this conviction sank like iron into my soul.

Our quiet little cottage--the peaceful village home I might never see again, came vividly before me. With a swollen heart, and eyes full of bitter tears, I thought I never loved them all so dearly as on the night of that day, the most eventful of my life.

I never closed an eye, and when our drum beat before dawn, in the echoing market-place of Compton Rennel, I started unrefreshed from my tear-wetted pillow, and prepared to march, with other recruits, for the head-quarters of the Scots Fusiliers.