Part 27 (2/2)
Can you understand that life is only measurable in terms of happiness and that _my_ happiness can only be where _you,_ are? If you weren't liable to these seizures I could bear to wait, but as it is, I can't.
I beg and beseech you not to make me wait till I am of age, Dam. There's no telling what may happen to you and I just can't bear it. _I'm coming_, if I don't hear from you, and I can easily do something to compel you to marry me, if I come. You are _not_ going to bear this alone, darling, so don't imagine it. We're not going to keep separate shops after all these years, just because you're ill with a trouble of some kind that fools can't understand.
”Now write to me at once and put me in a position to write to you in the ordinary way--or look out for me! I'm all ready to run away, all sorts of useful things packed--ready to come and be a soldier's girl.
”You know that I _do_ what I think I'll do--you spoke of my 'steel-straight directness and sweet brave will' in the poem you were making about me, you poor funny old boy, when you vanished, and which I found in your room when I went there to cry, (Oh, _how_ I cried when I found your odds and ends of verse about me there--I really did think my heart was 'broken' in actual fact.) Don't make me suffer any more, darling. I'm sure your Colonel will be sweet about it and give us a nice little house all to ourselves, now he has seen what a splendid soldier you are. If you stick to your folly about 'disgrace' I need not tell him our names and Grumper couldn't take me away from you, even if he ever found out where we were.
”I could go on writing all night, darling, but I'll only just say again _I am going to marry you and take care of you, Dam, in the army or out of it._
”Your fiancee and friend,
”LUCILLE GAVESTONE.”
Dam groaned aloud.
”Four o' rum 'ot, is wot _you_ want, mate, for that,” said the industrious self-improver at the shelf-table. ”Got a chill on yer stummick on sentry-go in the fog an' rine las' night.... I'd give a 'ogs'ead to see the bloke who wrote in the bloomin' Reggilashuns _'nor must bloomin' sentries stand in their blasted sentry-boxes in good or even in moderate-weather'_ a doin' of it 'isself in 'is bloomin'
'moderate weather' with water a runnin' down 'is back, an' 'is feet froze into a puddle, an' the fog a chokin' of 'im, an' 'is blighted carbine feelin' like a yard o' bad ice--an' then find the bloomin'
winder above 'is bed been opened by some kind bloke an' 'is bed a blasted swamp... Yus--you 'ave four o' rum 'ot and you'll feel like the bloomin' 'Ouse o' Lords. Then 'ave a Livin'stone Rouser.” ”Oh, shut up,” said Dam, cursing the Bathos of Things and returning to the beginning of Lucille's letter.
In his somewhat incoherent reply, Dam a.s.sured Lucille that he was in the rudest health and spirits, and the particular pet of his Colonel who inquired after his health almost daily with tender solicitude; that he had exaggerated his feeling on That Evening when he had kissed Lucille as a lover, and begged forgiveness; that marriage would seriously hamper a most promising military career; that he had had no recurrence of the ”fit” (a mere touch of sun); that it would be unkind and unfair of Lucille to bring scandal and disgrace upon a rising young soldier by hanging about the Lines and making inquiries about him with a view to forcing him into marriage, making him keep to a bargain made in a rash, unguarded moment of sentimentality; that, in any case, soldiers could not marry until they had a certain income and status, and, if they did so, it was no marriage and they were sent to jail; that his worst enemy would not do anything to drag him out once again into the light of publicity, and disgrace his family further, now that he had effectually disappeared and was being forgotten; and that he announced that he was known as Trooper Matthewson (E Troop, The Queen's Greys, Cavalry Lines, Shorncliffe) to prevent Lucille from keeping her most unladylike promise of persecuting him.
Lucille's next letter was shorter than the first.
”MY DARLING DAM,
”Don't be such a _priceless_ a.s.s. Come off it.
”Your own
”LUCILLE.
”P.S.--Write to me properly at once--or expect me on Monday.”
He obeyed, poured out his whole heart in love and thanks and blessings, and persuaded her that the one thing that could increase his misery would be her presence, and swore that he would strain every nerve to appear before her at the earliest possible moment a free man with redeemed name--provided he could persuade himself he was not _a congenital lunatic, an epileptic, a decadent--could cure himself of his mental disease...._
CHAPTER XI.
MORE MYRMIDONS.
The truly busy man cannot be actively and consciously unhappy. The truly miserable and despondent person is never continuously and actively employed. Fits of deep depression there may be for the worker when work is impossible, but, unless there be mental and physical illness, sleep is the other anaesthetic, refuge--and reward.
The Wise thank G.o.d for Work and for Sleep--and pay large premia of the former as Insurance in the latter.
To Damocles de Warrenne--to whom the name ”Trooper Matthewson” now seemed the only one he had ever had--the craved necessity of life and sanity was _work_, occupation, mental and physical labour. He would have blessed the man who sentenced him to commence the digging of a trench ten miles long and a yard deep for morning and evening labour, and to take over all the accounts of each squadron, for employment in the heat of the day. There was no man in the regiment so indefatigable, so energetic, so persevering, so insatiable of ”fatigues,” so willing and anxious to do other people's duty as well as his own, so restless, so untiring as Trooper Matthewson of E Troop.
For Damocles de Warrenne was in the Land of the Serpent and lived in fear. He lived in fear and feared to live; he thought of Fear and feared to think. He turned to work as, but for the memory of Lucille, he would have turned to drink: he laboured to earn deep dreamless sleep and he dreaded sleep. Awake, he could drug himself with work; asleep, he was the prey--the bound, gagged helpless, abject prey--of the Snake. The greediest glutton for work in the best working regiment in the world was Trooper Matthewson--but for him was no promotion. He was, alas, ”unreliable”--apt to be ”drunk and disorderly,” drunk to the point of ”seeing snakes” and becoming a weeping, screaming lunatic--a disgusting spectacle. And, when brought up for sentence, would solemnly a.s.sure the Colonel that he was _a total abstainer_, and stick to it when ”told-off” for adding impudent lying to shameful indulgence and sickening behaviour. No promotion for that type of waster while Colonel the Earl of A---- commanded the Queen's Greys, nor while Captain Daunt commanded the squadron the trooper occasionally disgraced.
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