The Dilemma/Chapter XVII
CHAPTER XVII.
Yorke had of late become somewhat intimate with Braddon. The latter was a disappointed man, remanded not long before from the headquarter staff to regimental duty; and his temper, soured by the misfortune which had marred a career of promise, rather jumped with the young man's present frame of mind. Yorke indeed was the only man in the regiment who saw anything of Braddon except on duty or at the mess, and he would often pass some of his long hours in the other's bungalow, in desultory talk or reading the books with which Braddon was well supplied. It was, however, only during the day that they met, Braddon usually passed his evenings alone, and although no one in the regiment had ever seen him the worse for drink, rumour had it that the vice which it was supposed had been the cause of his downfall was becoming a confirmed habit, and that he seldom went sober to bed. On the present occasion, however, Braddon proposed a move into his compound, where on the gravel space before the veranda were a couple of lounging-chairs and a low table with bottles and glasses, and, seating himself, invited his companion to take a cheroot and glass of brandy-and-water. Yorke accepted the cheroot, but declined the other refreshment, and the two began talking.
The conversation turned naturally on late events and the temper of the army, for already there had been hangings and disbandments. At the mess-table the subject was avoided, because some of the servants understood English; but in private little else was now talked about.
"Braywell, after all, is no worse than others, with his tomfoolery about hot fire, and gallant conduct, and the rest of it," observed Braddon, at one point of the conversation. "It is merely what he has been brought up to. Look at the way in which Lord Ellenborough belauded the troops which did not surrender in Afghanistan or had the pluck to face the enemy in the open. That wasn't the way old Lord Lake and the duke went to work. We have gone on pampering and buttering up the sepoy whenever he does his duty, till really one might suppose it was the recognized business of a soldier to run away, and quite a surprising and creditable circumstance if he does not. Every little skirmish, too, nowadays is magnified into a great battle."
"Still we had our real battles too," said Yorke. "Surely there has seldom been harder fighting anywhere than in the Sutlej campaign."
"But the sepoys did run away then; at any rate a great many of them did, and a good many Europeans too. For the matter of that Europeans know how to run away very freely sometimes, but then there is this difference between them and the sepoy, that they are always thoroughly ashamed of themselves, and ready to come up to the scratch again fresher than ever; but at the end of the first day at Ferozshah the sepoys had got the heart pretty well taken out of them; Lord Hardinge clubbed what European troops he could get together next morning and went in at the enemy; and if that handful of men had not been game, we should have been driven out of the country. There were no reserves to speak of."
"And yet the sepoys have fought well at times."
"Yes, and will fight well again if kept in order. The sepoy is a brave fellow enough — no man faces death, as a rule, with more indifference when he is in the humour; but you can't expect mercenary troops to fight properly without discipline."
"But don't you think the discipline, on the whole, is good? Where would you find less crime in an army, or better conduct?"
"Well, they don't drink," said Braddon, bitterly, "and so have no cause to misbehave; and they are obedient enough, no doubt, so long as you don't give them any orders."
"How not give them any orders?"
"Oh, of course, so long as you give them any customary orders, which they think proper, they will obey you readily enough. If a parade is ordered for tomorrow morning, I daresay you will find all the men there. But tell them to do anything they don't like — to intrench themselves on a campaign, for example, or to use a new kind of cartridge, or to march to a bad part of the country out of their turn — and then see the sort of fashion in which you are obeyed. It wasn't so long ago that our own noble regiment refused to go on a campaign for the precious reason that they had just come off a campaign. Or meet the sepoy of another regiment off duty, and see if he treats you as a soldier should behave to an officer. No; discipline has departed from the Bengal army this long time, and small blame to it. Everybody in office, from the governor-general and commander-in-chief downwards, has been doing his best for years past to undermine it, taking away power from commanding officers in one direction, and adding privileges in the other, till there is nothing left to hang any discipline upon, and the wonder is that the machine keeps together at all. Your commanding officers are mere dummies to take charge of the parade and draw a certain amount of pay; just as well perhaps that they are no more, considering the sort of creatures some of them are. Poor old Dumble, for example, isn't exactly the sort of man to put much responsibility upon."
"But how is it that the authorities are blind to this state of things, if it is so bad as you make out?"
"They are not blind; at any rate, not all of them. Lord Hardinge, who was a thorough soldier if ever there was one, saw plainly enough what a rotten state we were in. One day after the battle of Sobraon, when the staff were talking rather freely about the behaviour of certain regiments, he turned round and said — I was about headquarters, then, you know: 'I can tell you what, gentlemen, the next enemy you will have to fight is your own army.' And his words will come true, if we don't look out."
"Then do you really think there is any danger of the whole army ever turning against us?"
"I don't know exactly about that. The native officers and the old soldiers will hardly be such fools as to throw up their pensions, and then the Hindoos and Mussulmans wouldn't care to row in the same boat, so that there are a good many chances in our favour; but I confess I should like to see every native regiment cut down to eight hundred strong, and half-a-dozen more European regiments ordered out."
Yorke noticed that while they were talking, Braddon had more than once filled his glass. This was the first time he had been witness to the habit in which it was suspected by the regiment that the latter indulged, and he would fain have interposed with a word of caution and remonstrance. But a sense of delicacy restrained him at first, and now his companion was beyond remonstrance. His voice had become thicker; and when, a few minutes later, Yorke got up to go away, he was becoming indistinct in his utterance and loud in his denunciation of the authorities; and the young man went off to his bungalow sad at heart at witnessing the falling away of his brother officer, good soldier and clever man as he was, and with the latter's forebodings about the future of the army still in his ears. Braddon and Falkland had used almost the same words. Was, then, the confidence he had expressed to Miss Cunningham in the loyally of his regiment a mere foolish infatuation, as baseless as his dream of gaining her love?