“Well, then,” said the patient commander, “we’ll try. Fall in, John Norton. Attention! Carry arms! Prime and load.”
All these manoeuvres did John go through, like an automaton, until the last, when, laying his hand upon a bayonet where his cartouch-box ought to be, he exclaimed—
“By all that’s bad, general, you’re right.”
According to the present strict rules of discipline in the British army a file of men would have been ordered to march so refractory a subject off to the guardhouse; and if he were not tried by a regimental court-martial for insubordination, he might deem himself a fortunate individual. At all events, “good conduct” would never afterwards, should he continue in the service to the age of the Duke of Wellington, emblazon his discharge. But John Norton walked home beside the general’s horse listening, with a meek and subdued spirit, to a friendly lecture upon the wisdom of sometimes supposing that others may be in the right as well as one’s self.
At the other side of the river, nearly opposite to General Bettesworth’s, but close to the village, are two adjoining brick houses, somewhat removed from the road. In one of these lived and died General Stratton. The other was occupied by Major Legge. The general was a venerable Ligonier-like man, and his wife a stately matron of the olden time, whom I seem to see this moment, with her stomacher and brocaded dress, and a long narrow scarf trimmed with the richest lace; her grey locks turned up, like flax round a distaff, over her forehead, and a towering bonnet of black silk over all. She was deemed a proud woman, but very good to the poor. As to her pride, I have heard no proof of it, except that she kept the village gossips at bay; but the reputation of her goodness is incontestable.
An Emeritus of a lower grade, but more formidable than the whole Etat Major to the juvenile imagination, was William Oulton Prosser, who from the post of a bombardier had retired to Ballyfermot Castle, where he opened an “academy” of liberal instruction. I still quail to remember him. It was only the other day that his name, written in round-hand across the title page of a Trusler’s Chronology, purchased at Sharpe’s auction-room, sent a thrill through me, as if it had been the wind of a round shot. He was a tall, stern-looking pedagogue, who never came down from his bedroom before eleven o’clock in the forenoon; and then he despatched a dirty servant-boy into the schoolroom, which was detached from the castle, to summon the boys on the black list to come in and be whipped. That operation he performed as if he had served in no other rank than that of a drummer all the days of his “sogering” upon earth; and it was administered in the breakfast parlour amid the debris of the repast (bread and butter and eggshells), which the giant had just demolished to give him strength for the task. It had been his wont to inflict condign discipline in the midst of the school; but it happened on a day, that a boy, whose name was included in the usher’s report, lay in ambush behind a heap of coats, in the porch; and as the ogre passed through, flourishing the formidable taws, and “chewing vengeance all the way,” the poor wretch, in a frenzy of terror and despair, flew upon him, as a cat driven wild by persecution, and bit a large piece out of the calf of his leg. The big tyrant limped away into his den, and swore upon the family Bible that he would never again set foot in the said schoolroom, and that he would whip the said boy. He kept both the oaths, “in a sort of way,” being obliged to compromise the matter with the delinquent, who agreed to save his Christian master’s conscience, only on condition that the word of promise should be broken to the hope. A shadowy castigation, therefore (the ghost of a whipping), was submitted but from that hour the main business of the academy was carried on by deputies, remote from the eye of the master. He still continued, however, to perform the part of an high justiciary, and to take cognizance of copybooks and arithmetical exercises, which the boys were required to exhibit to him in procession.
The remainder of his day was occupied principally in attending to the refrigerating process of some gallon of boiled water, in a huge white jug, which he filled every morning at the breakfast-table, and set upon the stone outside the window to cool. After dinner, this supply was placed on the table by his right hand, and corrected, pro re nata, with whiskey, until, tumbler after tumbler, the whole of its contents disappeared. That was his stint; he never exceeded it; but as soon as it was finished, which was rarely before two or three o’clock next morning, he went to bed; and it depended on the quality of the spirit thus imbibed (the quantity being uniformly the same) in what degree of ill-humour he should apply himself to his professional duties of the following noon.
Such was the schoolmaster of one of the fashionable boarding-schools in the immediate vicinity of our capital some fifty years since. It was my fortune to be removed from under his ferula to that of another who had been an operative tailor—not an Alton Locke, though—and whose ignorance of everything but handwriting and Gough’s Arithmetic, was far more astounding than that of the bombardier. He made up, however, in morality, for his shortcomings in erudition; and as they both kept tolerably competent ushers, and had an understanding of mutual profit with the bookseller, care was taken that their pupils should be supplied with a competent stock of tools for learning at all events; so we hobbled through the Latin and
