But I am not entirely of the vulgar opinion. The finished politician may not be a subject for odes, but a political education is a great asset to any man. Our Mess President, William, once assisted a friend to lose a parliamentary election, and his experience has been invaluable to us. The moment we are tired of fighting and want billets, the Squadron sits down where it is and the Skipper passes the word along for William. William dusts his boots, adjusts his tie and heads for the most prepossessing farm in sight. Arrived there, he takes off his hat to the dog, pats the pig, asks the cow after the calf, salutes the farmer, curtsies to the farmeress, then turning to the inevitable baby, exclaims in the language of the country, "Mong Jew, kell jolly ongfong" (Gosh, what a topping kid!), and bending tenderly over it imprints a lingering kiss upon its india-rubber features and wins the freedom of the farm. The Mess may make use of the kitchen; the spare bed is at the Skipper's disposal; the cow will move up and make room for the First Mate; the pig will be only too happy to welcome the Subalterns to its modest abode.
Ordinary billeting officers stand no chance against our William and his political education. "That fellow," I heard one disgruntled competitor remark to him, "would hug the devil for a knob of coke." Once only did he meet his match, and a battle of Titans resulted.
In pursuit of his business he entered a certain farmhouse, to find the baby already in possession of another officer, a heavy red creature with a monocle, who was rocking the infant's cradle seventy-five revolutions per minute and making dulcet noises on a moustache comb.
William's heart fell to his field boots; he recognised the red creature's markings immediately. This was another politician; no bloodless victory would be his; fur would fly first, powder burn—Wow!
The red person must have tumbled to William as well, for he increased the revolutions to one hundred and forty per minute and broke into a shrill lullaby of his own impromptu composition:
"Go to sleep, Mummy's liddle Did-ums;
Go to sleep, Daddy's liddle Thing-me-jig."
Nevertheless this did not baffle our William. He approached from a flank, deftly twitched the infant out of its cradle by the scruff of its neck, and commenced to plaster it with tender kisses. However the red man tailed it as it went past and hung on, kissing any bits he could reach. When the mother reappeared they were worrying the baby between them as a couple of hound puppies worry the hind leg of a cub. She beat them faithfully with a broom and hove both of them out into the wide wet world, and we all slept in a bog that night, and William was much abused and loathed. But that was his only failure.
If getting billets is William's job, getting rid of them is the Babe's affair. William, like myself, has far too great a mastery of the patois to handle delicate situations with success. For instance, when the farmer approaches me with tidings that my troopers have burnt two ploughshares and a crowbar, and my troop-horses have masticated a brick wall, I engage him in palaver, with the result that we eventually part, I under the impression that the incident is closed, and he under the impression that I have promised to buy him a new farm. This leads to all sorts of international complications.
The Babe, on the other hand, regards a knowledge of French as immoral and only knows enough of it to order himself a drink. He is also gifted with a slight stutter, which under the stress of a foreign language becomes chronic. So when we evacuate a billet William furnishes the Babe with enough money to compensate the farmer for all damages we have not committed, and then effaces himself. Donning a bright smile the Babe approaches the farmer and presses the lucre into his honest palm.
"Hi," says the worthy fellow, "what is this, then? One hundred francs! Where is the seventy-four francs, six centimes for the fleas your dog stole? The two hundred francs, three centimes for the indigestion your rations gave my pig? The eight thousand and ninety-nine francs, five centimes insurance money I should have collected if your brigands had not stopped my barn from burning?—and all the other little damages, three million, eight hundred thousand and forty-four francs, one centime in all—where is it, hein?"
"Ec-c-coutez une moment," the Babe begins. "Jer p-p-poovay expliquay tut—tut—tut—tut—sh-sh-shiss——" says he, loosening his stammer at rapid fire, popping and hissing, rushing and hitching like a red-hot machine-gun with a siphon attachment. In five minutes the farmer is white in the face and imploring the Babe to let bygones be bygones. "N-n-not a b-bit of it, old t-top," says the Babe. "Jer p-p-poovay exp-p-pliquay b-b-bub-bub-bub——" and away it goes again like a combined steam riveter and shower bath, like the water coming down at Lodore. No farmer however hardy has been known to stand more than twenty minutes of this. A quarter of an hour usually sees him bolting and barring himself into the cellar, with the Babe blowing him kisses of fond farewell through the key-hole.
We are billeted on a farm at the present moment.
The Skipper occupies the best bed; the rest of us are doing the al fresco touch in tents and bivouacs scattered about the surrounding landscape. We are on very intimate terms with the genial farmyard folk. Every morning I awake to find half a dozen hens and their gentleman friend roosting along my anatomy. One of the hens laid an egg in my ear this morning. William says she mistook it for her nest, but I take it the hen, as an honest bird, was merely paying rent for the roost.
The Babe turned up at breakfast this morning wearing only half a moustache. He said a goat had browsed off the other half while he slept. The poor beast has been having fits of giggles ever since—a moustache must be very ticklish to digest.
Yesterday MacTavish, while engaged in taking his tub in the open, noticed that his bath-water was mysteriously sinking lower and lower. Turning round to investigate the cause of the phenomenon he beheld a gentle milch privily sucking it up behind his back. There was a strong flavour of Coal Tar soap in the cafè au lait to-day.
This morning at dawn I was aroused by a cold foot pawing at my face. Blinking awake, I observed Albert Edward in rosy pyjamas capering beside my bed. "Show a leg, quick," he whispered. "Rouse out, and Uncle will show boysey pretty picture."
Brushing aside the coverlet of fowl, I followed him tiptoe across the dewy mead to the tarpaulin which he and MacTavish call "home."
Albert Edward lifted a flap and signed me to peep within. It was, as he had promised, a pretty picture.
At the foot of our MacTavish's mattress, under a spare blanket lifted from that warrior in his sleep, lay a large pink pig. Both were occupied in peaceful and stertorous repose.
"Heads of Angels, by Sir Joshua Reynolds," breathed Albert Edward in my ear.