I doubted it myself, as I looked at the locket. Last time I'd seen her, the poor sweet creature had been wearing nothing but black satin boots. Only Willy in this wide world would have thought of wearing the picture of a St. John's Wood whore round his neck; he had been truly wild about her, the randy little rascal. Well, if I'd had my way, he'd still have been thumping her every night, instead of lying on a stretcher with only half his head. But I wonder if the preaching Raglan; or any of the pious hypocrites who were his relatives, would have called him back to life on those terms? Poor little Willy.
Well, if I was in disgrace, I was also in good health, and that's what matters. I might have been one of the three thousand dead, or of the shattered wounded lying shrieking through the dusk along that awful line of bluffs. There seemed to be no medical provision—among the British, anyway—and scores of our folk just lay writhing where they fell, or died in the arms of mates hauling and carrying them down to the beach hospitals. The Russian wounded lay in piles by the hundred round our bivouacs, crying and moaning all through the night—I can hear their sobbing "Pajalsta! pajalsta!" still. The camp ground was littered with spent shot and rubbish and broken gear among the pools of congealed blood—my stars, wouldn't I just like to take one of our Ministers, or street-corner orators, or blood-lusting, breakfast-scoffing papas, over such a place as the Alma hills—not to let him see, because he'd just tut-tut and look anguished and have a good pray and not care a damn—but to shoot him in the belly with a soft-nosed bullet and let him die screaming where he belonged. That's all they deserve.
Not that I cared a fig for dead or wounded that night. I had worries enough on my own account, for in brooding about the injustice of Raglan's reproaches, I convinced myself that I'd be broke in the end. The loss of that mealy little German pimp swelled out of all proportion in my imagination, with the Queen calling me a murderer and Albert accusing me of high treason, and The Times trumpeting for my impeachment. It was only when I realized that the army might have other things to think about that I cheered up.
I was feeling as lonely as the policeman at Herne Bay14 when I loafed into Billy Russell's tent, and found him scribbling away by a storm lantern, with Lew Nolan perched on an ammunition box, holding forth as usual.
"Two brigades of cavalry!" Nolan was saying. "Two brigades, enough to have pursued and routed the whole pack of 'em! And what do they do? Sit on their backsides, because Lucan's too damned scared to order a bag of oats without a written order from Raglan. Lord Lucan? Bah! Lord bloody Look-on, more like."
"Hm'm," says Billy, writing away, and glanced up. "Here, Flash—you'll know. Were the Highlanders first into the redoubt? I say yes, but Lew says not.15 Stevens ain't sure, and I can't find Campbell anywhere. What d'ye say?"
I said I didn't know, and Nolan cried what the devil did it matter, anyway, they were only infantry. Billy, seeing he would get no peace from him, threw down his pen, yawned, and says to me:
"You look well used up, Flash. Are you all right? What's the matter, old fellow?"
I told him Willy was lost, and he said aye, that was a pity, a nice lad, and I told him what Raglan had said to me, and at this Nolan forgot his horses for a minute, and burst out:
"By God, isn't that of a piece? He's lost the best part of five brigades, and he rounds on one unfortunate galloper because some silly little ass who shouldn't have been here at all, at all, gets himself blown up by the Russians! If he was so blasted concerned for him, what did he let him near the field for in the first place? And if you was to wet-nurse him, why did he have you galloping your arse off all day? The man's a fool! Aye, and a bad general, what's worse—there's a Russian army clear away, thanks to him and those idle Frogs, and we could have cut 'em to bits on this very spot! I tell you, Billy, this fellow'll have to go."
"Come, Lew, he's won his fight," says Russell, stroking his beard. "It's too bad he's set on you, Flash—but I'd lose no sleep over it. Depend upon it, he's only voicing his own fears of what may be said to him—but he's a decent old stick, and bears no grudges. He'll have forgotten about it in a day or so."
"You think so?" says I, brightening.
"I should hope so!" cries Nolan. "Mother of God, if he hasn't more to think about, he should have. Here's him and Lucan between 'em have let a great chance slip, but by the time Billy here has finished tellin' the British public about how the matchless Guards and stern Caledonians swept the Muscovite horde aside on their bayonet points -"
"I like that," says Billy, winking at me. "I like it, Lew; go on, you're inspiring."
"Ah, bah, the old fool'll be thinking he's another Wellington," says Lew. "Aye, you can laugh, Russell—tell your readers what I've said about Lucan, though—I dare ye! That'd startle 'em!"
This talk cheered me up, for after all, it was what Russell thought—and wrote—that counted, and he never even mentioned Willy's death in his despatches to The Times. I heard that Raglan later referred to it, at a meeting with his generals, and Cardigan, the dirty swine, said privately that he wondered why the Prince's safety had been entrusted to a common galloper. But Lucan took the other side, and said only a fool would blame me for the death of another staff officer, and de Lacy Evans said Raglan should think himself lucky it was Willy he had lost and not me. Sound chaps, some of those generals.
And Nolan was right—Raglan and everyone else had enough to occupy them, after the Alma. The clever men were for driving on hard to Sevastopol, a bare twenty miles away, and with our cavalry in good fettle we could obviously have taken it. But the Frogs were too tired, or too sick, or too Froggy, if you ask me, and days were wasted, and the Ruskis managed to bolt the door in time.
What was worse, the carnage at Alma, and the cholera, had thinned the army horribly, there was no proper transport, and by the time we had lumbered on to Sevastopol peninsula we couldn't have robbed a hen-roost. But the siege had to be laid, and Raglan, looking wearier all the time, was thrashing himself to be cheerful and enthusiastic, with his army wasting, and winter coming, and the Frogs groaning at him. Oh, he was brave and determined and ready to take on all the odds—the worst kind of general imaginable. Give me a clever coward every time (which, of course, is why I'm such a dam' fine general myself).
So the siege was laid, the French and ourselves sitting down on the muddy, rain-sodden gullied plateau before Sevastopol, the dismalest place on earth, with no proper quarters but a few poor huts and tents, and everything to be carted up from Balaclava on the coast eight miles away. Soon the camp, and the road to it, was a stinking quagmire; everyone looked and felt filthy, the rations were poor, the work of preparing the siege was cruel hard (for the men, anyway), and all the bounce there had been in the army after Alma evaporated in the dank, feverish rain by day and the biting cold by night. Soon half of us were lousy, and the other half had fever or dysentery or cholera or all three—as some wag said, who'd holiday at Brighton if he could come to sunny Sevastopol instead?