There was great grief in the Duke’s Own. Colonel Prioleau was about to leave the regiment. He had commanded it for a number of years, and would have liked to have gone on commanding it to the end of the chapter, but promotion to the rank of general was fast approaching him, and he felt that he must ‘realise’ at least a part of his cash. Colonels of regiments in old days served for about tenpence a-day. The rest of their pay barely represented the interest upon the capital sum they had sunk in purchasing their rank. By exchanging to half-pay before promotion, a regimental lieutenant-colonel was able to pull a few[167] thousands out of the fire; and this Colonel Prioleau did.

There was great grief in the regiment at his approaching retirement. It was not so much on account of his personal qualities, although these—more particularly his easy-going laissez aller system—had long gained him great popularity, but because the command was to pass into the hands of one who was not, as the saying is, a ‘Duke’s Own man.’ Major Byfield had exchanged into the corps some few years previously, very much against the will of the regiment. Not that there was anything against him. Appearances were indeed in his favour. He was a quiet gentlemanly little person, with that slightly apologetic manner, and hesitating air, which often earn a man appreciation from his fellows, because they indicate a tacit acknowledgment of his inferiority.[168] Major Byfield showed himself still more nervous and undecided on joining the Duke’s Own. Although as a field officer his position was assured, and entitled him to considerable deference from all, he seldom claimed it or asserted himself more than he could help. His brother officers tolerated him, and were civil to him when they saw him, which was not often; but they yielded him no respect, and suffered him to interfere very little in the discipline and management of the corps. What could he know about the Duke’s Own, or its regimental ‘system?’ He had come from the 130th which, it was well known, had a very different ‘system,’ although both were, in fact, ruled by the Queen’s Regulations, and should have been governed on precisely the same lines. There is a good deal of mystery made and much stress laid upon the ‘system’[169] in force in a regiment. No doubt in many minor details there is a marked difference, but the broad outlines are, or ought to be, the same. But it is a favourite dogma, especially with officers in whom esprit de corps is strong, that no one can understand this system unless he has been trained in a regiment and assimilated it with his earliest ideas. So when the major spoke even in a whisper, or made the faintest hint of a suggestion, he was pooh-poohed and put down. Diggle, his fellow, although junior field officer, quietly said that it was all nonsense, that Byfield misunderstood the situation, that he had better wait till he had longer experience in the regiment before he presumed to put forward his views.

Major Byfield was thus satisfactorily repressed—but only for the time. He had[170] views and opinions of his own upon soldiering, and he was determined when opportunity came to give them full play. They had long persistently preached up and paraded before him the system in force in the Duke’s Own, but he had for as long come to the conclusion that the system was a bad one, and was resolved to reform it should he ever come into power. His character was a strange medley of opposite qualities. Behind the nervous diffidence, which being upon the surface seemed his most prominent trait, was an amount of quiet self-opinionated obstinacy which boded ill for those under his orders should he ever have much authority in his hands. Mrs. Byfield could have opened people’s eyes had she been permitted to disclose the secrets of the Byfield ménage. The major was as narrow-minded as a woman, and as[171] prone to mistake the relative proportion of things, to entirely ignore the main issues, to neglect or overlook broad questions, and concentrate himself with much tenacity upon comparatively unimportant details.

These peculiarities began to develop themselves very soon after he obtained the command. It became evident that the new colonel was a different man from what was supposed. He had been deemed a cipher—one who could hardly call his soul his own; but he proved a fussy, fidgetty, anxious creature, who from nervous apprehension, backed up by no small amount of self-conceit, promised to make everybody’s life a burden to him. The officers as a body began to fear that the good old times were on the wane. The decadence of the Duke’s Own must have fairly commenced when leave for hunting was refused and[172] there were two commanding officers’ parades on the same day. The fact was, the Colonel had resolved to reform the regiment according to his own ideas, and had already set to work with a will. The points on which it fell short of perfection were very clear to his own mind—a weak, but extremely active mind. He thought the officers neglected their business and knew too little of it—facts incontrovertible no doubt, although the remedy was not easy to discover, and needed stronger treatment than Colonel Byfield was in a position to apply. He felt dissatisfied, too, with the demeanour of the men in quarters and on parade, and if it was more within his compass to bring about improvement in these respects, his task was likely to be surrounded with the greater difficulty if his officers were discontented and soured. But the Colonel could[173] not see much beyond the end of his nose, and rushed forward blindly to his fate.

To come in for a large share of criticism, not to say abuse, from those under his orders, is too commonly the lot of the regimental lieutenant-colonel. Colonel Byfield was no exception to the general rule. Before he had been in command a month, his officers generally began to disapprove of his proceedings; after three, they disliked him cordially; and this grew into positive hatred at the end of six. Of course they kept their opinions very much to themselves. English officers, however grievous their wrongs, whether real or fancied, never overstep the bounds of due subordination; and however much those of the Duke’s Own may have chafed at their commanding officer’s trying ways and irksome rule, they did no more than call him a ‘beast’ to one[174] another, and utter frequent and fervid, but private prayers for his translation to some other sphere in this world or the next. They bore their burden bravely enough, silently too and without protest, except when some graceless subaltern or more artful captain wilfully exhibited an utter ignorance of the very rudiments of drill by clubbing his company upon parade, or comported himself disgracefully at the weekly examinations—offences especially heinous in the eyes of a Colonel whose greatest ‘fad’ was to make his officers walking vade mecums or living encyclop?dias of military knowledge. The schoolmaster was abroad in the Duke’s Own, very much to everyone’s discomfort and dissatisfaction.

Excessive timidity, an exaggerated fear of constituted authority, were the secrets of Colonel Byfield’s irritating line of conduct.[175] He was for ever invoking the distant deities of the ............