The Horse Marines
(1911)

The Rt. Hon. R.B. Haldane, Secretary of State for War6, was questioned in the House of Commons on April 8th about the rocking-horses which the War Office is using for the purpose of teaching recruits to ride. Lord Ronaldshay asked the War Secretary if rocking-horses were to be supplied to all the cavalry regiments for teaching recruits to ride. ‘The noble Lord,’ replied Mr. Haldane, ‘is doubtless alluding to certain dummy horses on rockers which have been tested with very satisfactory results.’ . . . The mechanical steed is a wooden horse with an astonishing tail. It is painted brown and mounted on swinging rails. The recruit leaps into the saddle and pulls at the reins while the riding-instructor rocks the animal to and fro with his foot. The rocking-horses are being made at Woolwich. They are quite cheap.

— Daily Paper.

6 Now Viscount Haldane of Cloan.

My instructions to Mr. Leggatt, my engineer, had been accurately obeyed. He was to bring my car on completion of annual overhaul, from Coventry via London, to Southampton Docks to await my arrival; and very pretty she looked, under the steamer’s side among the railway lines, at six in the morning. Next to her new paint and varnish I was most impressed by her four brand-new tyres.

‘But I didn’t order new tyres,’ I said as we moved away. ‘These are Irresilients, too.’

‘Treble-ribbed,’ said Leggatt. ‘Diamond-stud sheathing.’

‘Then there has been a mistake.’

‘Oh no, sir; they’re gratis.’

The number of motor manufacturers who give away complete sets of treble-ribbed Irresilient tyres is so limited that I believe I asked Leggatt for an explanation.

‘I don’t know that I could very well explain, sir,’ was the answer. ‘It ‘ud come better from Mr. Pyecroft. He’s on leaf at Portsmouth — staying with his uncle. His uncle ‘ad the body all night. I’d defy you to find a scratch on her even with a microscope.’

‘Then we will go home by the Portsmouth road,’ I said.

And we went at those speeds which are allowed before the working-day begins or the police are thawed out. We were blocked near Portsmouth by a battalion of Regulars on the move.

‘Whitsuntide manoeuvres just ending,’ said Leggatt. ‘They’ve had a fortnight in the Downs.’

He said no more until we were in a narrow street somewhere behind Portsmouth Town Railway Station, where he slowed at a green-grocery shop. The door was open, and a small old man sat on three potato-baskets swinging his feet over a stooping blue back.

‘You call that shinin’ ’em?’ he piped. ‘Can you see your face in ’em yet? No! Then shine ’em, or I’ll give you a beltin’ you’ll remember!’

‘If you stop kickin’ me in the mouth perhaps I’d do better,’ said Pyecroft’s voice meekly.

We blew the horn.

Pyecroft arose, put away the brushes, and received us not otherwise than as a king in his own country.

‘Are you going to leave me up here all day?’ said the old man.

Pyecroft lifted him down and he hobbled into the back room.

‘It’s his corns,’ Pyecroft explained. ‘You can’t shine corny feet — and he hasn’t had his breakfast.’

‘I haven’t had mine either,’ I said.

‘Breakfast for two more, uncle,’ Pyecroft sang out.

‘Go out an’ buy it then,’ was the answer, ‘or else it’s half-rations.’

Pyecroft turned to Leggatt, gave him his marketing orders, and despatched him with the coppers.

‘I have got four new tyres on my car,’ I began impressively.

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Pyecroft. ‘You have, and I will say’— he patted my car’s bonnet —‘you earned ’em.’

‘I want to know why —,’ I went on.

‘Quite justifiable. You haven’t noticed anything in the papers, have you?’

‘I’ve only just landed. I haven’t seen a paper for weeks.’

‘Then you can lend me a virgin ear. There’s been a scandal in the Junior Service — the Army, I believe they call ’em.’

A bag of coffee-beans pitched on the counter. ‘Roast that,’ said the uncle from within.

Pyecroft rigged a small coffee-roaster, while I took down the shutters, and sold a young lady in curl-papers two bunches of mixed greens and one soft orange.

‘Sickly stuff to handle on an empty stomach, ain’t it?’ said Pyecroft.

‘What about my new tyres?’ I insisted.

‘Oh, any amount. But the question is’— he looked at me steadily —‘is this what you might call a court-martial or a post-mortem inquiry?’

‘Strictly a post-mortem,’ said I.

‘That being so,’ said Pyecroft, ‘we can rapidly arrive at facts. Last Thursday — the shutters go behind those baskets — last Thursday at five bells in the forenoon watch, otherwise ten-thirty A.M., your Mr. Leggatt was discovered on Westminster Bridge laying his course for the Old Kent Road.’

‘But that doesn’t lead to Southampton,’ I interrupted.

‘Then perhaps he was swinging the car for compasses. Be that as it may, we found him in that latitude, simultaneous as Jules and me was ong route for Waterloo to rejoin our respective ships — or Navies I should say. Jules was a permissionaire, which meant being on leaf, same as me, from a French cassowary-cruiser at Portsmouth. A party of her trusty and well-beloved petty officers ‘ad been seeing London, chaperoned by the R.C. Chaplain. Jules ‘ad detached himself from the squadron and was cruisin’ on his own when I joined him, in company of copious lady-friends. But, mark you, your Mr. Leggatt drew the line at the girls. Loud and long he drew it.’

‘I’m glad of that,’ I said.

‘You may be. He adopted the puristical formation from the first. “Yes,” he said, when we was annealing him at — but you wouldn’t know the pub —“I am going to Southampton,” he says, “and I’ll stretch a point to go via Portsmouth; but,” says he, “seeing what sort of one hell of a time invariably trarnspires when we cruise together, Mr. Pyecroft, I do not feel myself justified towards my generous and long-suffering employer in takin’ on that kind of ballast as well.” I assure you he considered your interests.’

‘And the girls?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I left that to Jules. I’m a monogomite by nature. So we embarked strictly ong gar?ong. But I should tell you, in case he didn’t, that your Mr. Leggatt’s care for your interests ‘ad extended to sheathing the car in matting and gunny-bags to preserve her paint-work. She was all swathed up like an I-talian baby.’

‘He is careful about his paint-work,’ I said.

‘For a man with no Service experience I should say he was fair homicidal on the subject. If we’d been Marines he couldn’t have been more pointed in his allusions to our hob-nailed socks. However, we reduced him to a malleable condition, and embarked for Portsmouth. I’d seldom rejoined my vaisseau ong automobile, avec a fur coat and goggles. Nor ‘ad Jules.’

‘Did Jules say much?’ I asked, helplessly turning the handle of the coffee-roaster.

‘That’s where I pitied the pore beggar. He ‘adn’t the language, so to speak. He was confined to heavings and shruggin’s and copious Mong Jews! The French are very badly fitted with relief-valves. And then our Mr. Leggatt drove. He drove.’

‘Was he in a very malleable condition?’

‘Not him! We recognised the value of his cargo from the outset. He hadn’t a chance to get more than moist at the edges. After which we went to sleep; and now we’ll go to breakfast.’

We entered the back room where everything was in order, and a screeching canary made us welcome. The uncle had added sausages and piles of buttered toast to the kippers. The coffee, cleared with a piece of fish-skin, was a revelation.

Leggatt, who seemed to know the premises, had run the car into the tiny backyard where her mirror-like back almost blocked up the windows. He minded shop while we ate. Pyecroft passed him his rations through a flap in the door. The uncle ordered him in, after breakfast, to wash up, and he jumped in his gaiters at the old man’s commands as he has never jumped to mine.

‘To resoom the post-mortem,’ said Pyecroft, lighting his pipe. ‘My slumbers were broken by the propeller ceasing to revolve, and by vile language from your Mr. Leggatt.’

‘I— I—’ Leggatt began, a blue-checked duster in one hand and a cup in the other.

‘When you’re wanted aft you’ll be sent for, Mr. Leggatt,’ said Pyecroft amiably. ‘It’s clean mess decks for you now. Resooming once more, we was on a lonely and desolate ocean near Portsdown, surrounded by gorse bushes, and a Boy Scout was stirring my stomach with his little copper-stick.’

‘“You count ten,” he says.

‘“Very good, Boy Jones,” I says, “count ’em,” and I hauled him in over the gunnel, and ten I gave him with my large flat hand. The remarks he passed, lying face down tryin’ to bite my leg, would have reflected credit on any Service. Having finished I dropped him overboard again, which was my gross political error. I ought to ‘ave killed him; because he began signalling — rapid and accurate — in a sou’westerly direction. Few equatorial calms are to be apprehended when B.P.‘s little pets take to signallin’. Make a note o’ that! Three minutes later we were stopped and boarded by Scouts — up our backs, down our necks, and in our boots! The last I heard from your Mr. Leggatt as he went under, brushin’ ’em off his cap, was thanking Heaven he’d covered up the new paint-work with mats. An ‘eroic soul!’

‘Not a scratch on her body,’ said Leggatt, pouring out the coffee-grounds.

‘And Jules?’ said I.

‘Oh, Jules thought the much advertised Social Revolution had begun, but his mackintosh hampered him.

‘You told me to bring the mackintosh,’ Leggatt whispered to me.

‘And when I ‘ad ’em half convinced he was a French vicomte coming down to visit the Commander-inChief at Portsmouth, he tried to take it off. Seeing his uniform underneath, some sucking Sherlock Holmes of the Pink Eye Patrol (they called him Eddy) deduced that I wasn’t speaking the truth. Eddy said I was tryin’ to sneak into Portsmouth unobserved — unobserved mark you!— and join hands with the enemy. It trarnspired that the Scouts was conducting a field-day against opposin’ forces, ably assisted by all branches of the Service, and they was so afraid the car wouldn’t count ten points to them in the fray, that they’d have scalped us, but for the intervention of an umpire — also in short under-drawers. A fleshy sight!’

Here Mr. Pyecroft shut his eyes and nodded. ‘That umpire,’ he said suddenly, ‘was our Mr. Morshed — a gentleman whose acquaintance you have already made and profited by, if I mistake not7.’

7 ‘Their Lawful Occasions,’ Traffics and Discoveries.

‘Oh, was the Navy in it too?’ I said; for I had read of wild doings occasionally among the Boy Scouts on the Portsmouth Road, in which Navy, Army, and the world at large seemed to have taken part.

‘The Navy was in it. I was the only one out of it — for several seconds. Our Mr. Morshed failed to recognise me in my fur boa, and my appealin’ winks at ’im behind your goggles didn’t arrive. But when Eddy darling had told his story, I saluted, which is difficult in furs, and I stated I was bringin’ him dispatches from the North. My Mr. Morshed cohered on the instant. I’ve never known his ethergram installations out of order yet. “Go and guard your blessed road,” he says to the Fratton Orphan Asylum standing at attention all round him, and, when they was removed —“Pyecroft,” he says, still sotte voce, “what in Hong–Kong are you doing with this dun-coloured sampan?”

‘It was your Mr. Leggatt’s paint-protective matting which caught his eye. She did resemble a sampan, especially about the stern-works. At these remarks I naturally threw myself on ‘is bosom, so far as Service conditions permitted, and revealed him all, mentioning that the car was yours. You know his way of working his lips like a rabbit? Yes, he was quite pleased. “His car!” he kept murmuring, working his lips like a rabbit. “I owe ’im more than a trifle for things he wrote about me. I’ll keep the car.”

‘Your Mr. Leggatt now injected some semi-mutinous remarks to the effect that he was your chauffeur in charge of your car, and, as such, capable of so acting. Mr. Morshed threw him a glarnce. It sufficed. Didn’t it suffice, Mr. Leggatt?’

‘I knew if something didn’t happen, something worse would,’ said Leggatt. ‘It never fails when you’re aboard.’

‘And Jules?’ I demanded.

‘Jules was, so to speak, panicking in a water-tight flat through his unfortunate lack of language. I had to introduce him as part of the entente cordiale, and he was put under arrest, too. Then we sat on the grass and smoked, while Eddy and Co. violently annoyed the traffic on the Portsmouth Road, till the umpires, all in short panties, conferred on the valuable lessons of the field-day and added up points, same as at target-practice. I didn’t hear their conclusions, but our Mr. Morshed delivered a farewell address to Eddy and Co., tellin’ ’em they ought to have deduced from a hundred signs about me, that I was a friendly bringin’ in dispatches from the North. We left ’em tryin’ to find those signs in the Scout book, and we reached Mr. Morshed’s hotel at Portsmouth at 6.27 P.M. ong automobile. Here endeth the first chapter.’

‘Begin the second,’ I said.

The uncle and Leggatt had finished washing up and were seated, smoking, while the damp duster dried at the fire.

‘About what time was it,’ said Pyecroft to Leggatt, ‘when our Mr. Morshed began to talk about uncles?’

‘When he came back to the bar, after he’d changed into those rat-catcher clothes,’ said Leggatt.

‘That’s right. “Pye,” said he, “have you an uncle?” “I have,” I says. “Here’s santy to him,” and I finished my sherry and bitters to you, uncle.’

‘That’s right,’ said Pyecroft’s uncle sternly. ‘If you hadn’t I’d have belted you worth rememberin’, Emmanuel. I had the body all night.’

Pyecroft smiled affectionately. ‘So you ‘ad, uncle, an’ beautifully you looked after her. But as I was saying, “I have an uncle, too,” says Mr. Morshed, dark and lowering. “Yet somehow I can’t love him. I want to mortify the beggar. Volunteers to mortify my uncle, one pace to the front.”

‘I took Jules with me the regulation distance. Jules was getting interested. Your Mr. Leggatt preserved a strictly nootral attitude.

‘“You’re a pressed man,” says our Mr. Morshed. “I owe your late employer much, so to say. The car will manoeuvre all night, as requisite.”

‘Mr. Leggatt come out noble as your employee, and, by ‘Eaven’s divine grace, instead of arguing, he pleaded his new paint and varnish which was Mr. Morshed’s one vital spot (he’s lootenant on one of the new catch-’em-alive-o’s now). “True,” says he, “paint’s an ‘oly thing. I’ll give you one hour to arrange a modus vivendi. Full bunkers and steam ready by 9 P.M. to-night, if you please.”

‘Even so, Mr. Leggatt was far from content. I ‘ad to arrange the details. We run her into the yard here.’ Pyecroft nodded through the window at my car’s glossy back-panels. ‘We took off the body with its mats and put it in the stable, substitooting (and that yard’s a tight fit for extensive repairs) the body of uncle’s blue delivery cart. It overhung a trifle, but after I’d lashed it I knew it wouldn’t fetch loose. Thus, in our composite cruiser, we repaired once more to the hotel, and was immediately dispatched to the toy-shop in the High Street where we took aboard one rocking-horse which was waiting for us.’

‘Took aboard what?’ I cried.

‘One fourteen-hand dapple-grey rocking-horse, with pure green rockers and detachable tail, pair gashly glass eyes, complete set ‘orrible grinnin’ teeth, and two bloody-red nostrils which, protruding from the brown papers, produced the tout ensemble of a Ju-ju sacrifice in the Benin campaign. Do I make myself comprehensible?’

‘Perfectly. Did you say anything?’ I asked.

‘Only to Jules. To him, I says, wishing to try him. “Allez à votre bateau. Je say mon Lootenong. Eel voo donneray porkwor.” To me, says he, “Vous ong ate hurroo! Jamay de la vee!” and I saw by his eye he’d taken on for the full term of the war. Jules was a blue-eyed, brindle-haired beggar of a useful make and inquirin’ habits. Your Mr. Leggatt he only groaned.’

Leggatt nodded. ‘It was like nightmares,’ he said. ‘It was like nightmares.’

‘Once more, then,’ Pyecroft swept on, ‘we returned to the hotel and partook of a sumptuous repast, under the able and genial chairmanship of our Mr. Morshed, who laid his projecks unreservedly before us. “In the first place,” he says, opening out bicycle-maps, “my uncle, who, I regret to say, is a brigadier-general, has sold his alleged soul to Dicky Bridoon for a feathery hat and a pair o’ gilt spurs. Jules, conspuez l’oncle!” So Jules, you’ll be glad to hear —’

‘One minute, Pye,’ I said. ‘Who is Dicky Bridoon?’

‘I don’t usually mingle myself up with the bickerings of the Junior Service, but it trarnspired that he was Secretary o’ State for Civil War, an’ he’d been issuing mechanical leather-belly gee-gees which doctors recommend for tumour — to the British cavalry in loo of real meat horses, to learn to ride on. Don’t you remember there was quite a stir in the papers owing to the cavalry not appreciatin’ ’em? But that’s a minor item. The main point was that our uncle, in his capacity of brigadier-general, mark you, had wrote to the papers highly approvin’ o’ Dicky Bridoon’s mechanical substitutes an ‘ad thus obtained promotion — all same as a agnosticle stoker psalm-singin’ ‘imself up the Service under a pious captain. At that point of the narrative we caught a phosphorescent glimmer why the rocking-horse might have been issued; but none the less the navigation was intricate. Omitting the fact it was dark and cloudy, our brigadier-uncle lay somewhere in the South Downs with his brigade, which was manoeuvrin’ at Whitsum manoeuvres on a large scale — Red Army versus Blue, et cetera; an’ all we ‘ad to go by was those flapping bicycle-maps and your Mr. Leggatt’s groans.’

‘I was thinking what the Downs mean after dark,’ said Leggatt angrily.

‘They was worth thinkin’ of,’ said Pyecroft. ‘When we had studied the map till it fair spun, we decided to sally forth and creep for uncle by hand in the dark, dark night, an’ present ’im with the rocking-horse. So we embarked at 8.57 P.M.’

‘One minute again, please. How much did Jules understand by that time?’ I asked.

‘Sufficient unto the day — or night, perhaps I should say. He told our Mr. Morshed he’d follow him more sang frays, which is French for dead, drunk, or damned. Barrin’ ‘is paucity o’ language, there wasn’t a blemish on Jules. But what I wished to imply was, when we climbed into the back parts of the car, our Lootenant Morshed says to me, “I doubt if I’d flick my cigar-ends about too lavish, Mr. Pyecroft. We ought to be sitting on five pounds’ worth of selected fireworks, and I think the rockets are your end.” Not being able to smoke with my ‘ead over the side I threw it away; and then your Mr. Leggatt, ‘aving been as nearly mutinous as it pays to be with my Mr. Morshed, arched his back and drove.’

‘Where did he drive to, please?’ said I.

‘Primerrily, in search of any or either or both armies; seconderrily, of course, in search of our brigadier-uncle. Not finding him on the road, we ran about the grass looking for him. This took us to a great many places in a short time. Ow ‘eavenly that lilac did smell on top of that first Down — stinkin’ its blossomin’ little heart out!’

‘I ‘adn’t leesure to notice,’ said Mr. Leggatt. ‘The Downs were full o’ chalk-pits, and we’d no lights.’

‘We ............