A Victorian Gent (The Making of a Man Series, Book 1)

by Andrew Wareham

  The major served himself, clumsily, too hungry to march out in disgust.

  The officers piled their plates high and ate without further ado, apart from a couple who said a brief grace to themselves first.

  Cook brought in pecan tarts after they had all finished the main course, passed them round proudly. They were very tasty, sugar glazed and well-baked, a rare treat.

  "Got taught by a German feller what worked for my uncle on 'is place, when I was a boy. Good, ain't they?"

  The major was close to apoplexy as the cook leant on the table next to him and invited his congratulations.

  Most of the officers wandered off as soon as they had finished, only three staying in the mess with Dick and the major and taking a single drink.

  "We don't reckon to be a hard-drinking crowd, major, except maybe on a Saturday night at the hotel, and that not every week. Mostly farm-boys, our men, and they don't like to see their officers the worse for liquor. Most of them will be sitting around their fires and singing the old Revivalist songs and hymns, major. From all I have read I get a feeling that Cromwell might have been at home with these men. It's not like England, major, and these men have their own ways. I don't know many of them yet, not by name, but I have seen them and their sort about the town, major, and I will not cross them, that is for sure. I am an Englishman, too, major, and the one thing I have learned this year is that these men speak English but think and act American - better we should fit in with them, rather than try to make them behave like us."

  Dick glanced at the major's face, mentally shrugged; he had tried.

  "If I might venture to say so, major, these men will not take to the redcoat's silent acceptance of the shouted order and the threat of the lash. They see themselves as free men, major, and they will have to be brought slowly to the notion that orders must be obeyed rather than discussed."

  "They are soldiers, Captain Burke. They will be obedient to command or face court-martial at the drumhead. Hang a couple and a thousand lashes for another ten or twenty and they will learn what is right!"

  "Well, major, no doubt you will discuss that with the colonel. Personally, I would not recommend it! For the while, I shall bid you good-night. I shall be on the rifle range with my company first thing, major!"

  The major discovered he was on his own in the mess; even the barman had left, and taken his bottles with him.

  The colonel called all officers to him next morning at Curtis-Manvers urgent demand. The colonel had discovered that he was very much an American, in speech and habits.

  "Morning, gents! Major Curtis-Manvers informs me that he is not happy with the battalion, and is especially displeased by the, in his words not mine, 'disloyalty of the officers'. The major is an officer of a lot of experience, and he went to war in the Crimea; we got at least listen to him, lads!"

  There was a blank silence before Dick spoke up, best King’s English, carefully precise to demonstrate to the Mess that all Englishmen were not hatched from the same egg.

  "I beg your pardon, Colonel, but do you intend to bring in thousand-lash floggings and hangings, sir? Because, sir, I will have no part in that and if you do, then I must regretfully resign my commission."

  Curtis-Manvers jumped to his feet, red in the face.

  "Just what I said, Colonel Mayberry! A captain, no less, and refusing to support his seniors! And I would add that only a coward would seek the opportunity to avoid service in this time of need."

  There was a deep indrawing of breath around the room, every man present wincing as one.

  Mayberry spoke rapidly, before Dick could respond.

  "I am sure you did not mean to insult Captain Burke, Major Curtis-Manvers!"

  "I meant every word I said, sir! The officers of this regiment are a disgrace to their uniforms and I would have expected any Englishman to have realised this and to have supported me fully. I can only assume that Mr Burke prefers not to go to battle – as this mob that you call a battalion will never be permitted into the line in its present state!"

  That made the insult deliberate and intolerable; Dick had no choice.

  "You ain't wearing a piece, Major, so I can't kill you here and now. I presume that you expect a formal duel – between Englishmen; so I shall be outside in ten minutes from now, sir, and I shall expect to see you there, with your second at your shoulder. If I don’t find you, I shall come in search of you! You have insulted my honour, sir, and I will not tolerate that."

  Dick spun on his heel, walked quickly out, followed by every other junior officer.

  "Have you a revolver of your own, Major Curtis-Manvers?"

  "My side-arm, an Adams, colonel."

  "You have eight minutes left to get it and load it, sir."

  "But... a subaltern cannot challenge a field-officer, colonel! Not on service!"

  "You called him a coward, sir! Any Western man has the right to take your life for that. Bearing in mind who this man is, I have no doubt that he will do so. I am informed that the Eastern newspapers reported on the 'Sharps Kid' last year - did you read of him?"

  Curtis-Manvers had, only half believing.

  “Mr Burke is that man, sir, and, while I know that he is an officer and an English gentleman, he is also rightly tender of his name among us. He will demand that you stand up with him, sir, and I cannot gainsay him.”

  The newspapers had claimed a total of not less than a score of bodies to the Sharps Kid’s account at the two conflicts they had reported, and had invented besides another dozen reputed previous encounters. Three penny-dreadfuls had already been published detailing as honest truth their authors’ lurid imaginations, and accurate only in Dick’s English origins and the spelling of his name; the reasons he had left England were varied, but all outrageously bloody.

  Major Curtis-Manvers excused himself, to get his gun he said, scurrying off to his room in the quarters rough-built next to the mess.

  The colonel had ridden in from his house that morning and intended to return after the meeting. His horse was still saddled. The major saw the animal as he ran back from his lodging, bags and uniforms abandoned, the little money he possessed stuffed into his pockets, and added horse theft to desertion as he left at a gallop.

  "Captain Burke!"

  "Colonel?"

  "You can hear the horse, sir?"

  "I can, colonel. Why?"

  "The major seems to have remembered a pressing engagement elsewhere, Mr Burke - and has used my horse for the purpose! Let him go, sir! We are better-off without his sort. I have little doubt that he will find his loyalties lie with the South, sir - we shall see no more of him. It is, I would add, easier this way. I can record him as a deserter to the Confederacy in a very brief report, while his death in the Company Street would have taken a damned-sight more effort to explain. We can make do without a major sent from Washington, I believe. Thank you, Mr Burke!"

  The colonel shook his head and surveyed the audience - every officer legitimately present and at least a half of the men peering from any vantage point they could find. There was no point to attempting any military activity in their state of excitement.

  "Dismiss the men, gentlemen. An afternoon of leisure, probably the last they will experience for some time. We shall parade in the morning, in readiness to move out next week, all men fully equipped and to be inspected. We shall ready the baggage over the next days. For the while, all officers are invited to join me for a celebratory drink in the hotel!"

  In the nature of things the celebratory drink became several and most of the officers settled in to make a batch of it. Dick had little head for alcohol, and small experience of drinking parties; he quietly disappeared into the back rooms and found a book. A few minutes after he sat down there was a tap at his door and Elizabeth Parsons slipped inside.

  “May I come in, Mr Burke? Quietly – I must think of my reputation, sir! My brother would be most displeased to hear that I had been visiting you in private!”

  She seemed to feel this was very
amusing while Dick was sure it could be the cause of bloodshed. If he argued with her it might well attract the attention he desperately wanted to avoid.

  “You should not be here, ma’am!”

  “It is broad daylight, sir – not even the most old-cattish of the tabbies could suspect wrong-doing at two o’clock of the afternoon!”

  Dick had mixed more with local society, knew the quality of the ladies.

  “You are wrong there, you know, Miss Elizabeth – the governor’s wife, for example, could suspect anybody of everything at any time of day.”

  “Well, they are wrong so it does not matter! I am told that you will take to the railroad on Tuesday, Mr Burke.”

  “Monday, ma’am, is the intention, though I have my doubts. That would demand that we loaded our baggage on the Sabbath – and rations for seven hundred men for a month and powder and ball for ninety days and the cookhouse itself and all of the other stores will not be put aboard in ten minutes, I believe. Then we must put our horses into their cars last thing – for they must not stand longer than can be avoided. Many of the men will not work on Sunday, preferring to reserve it for religious observance. I believe we shall load up on Monday and steam out, with luck, late in the afternoon, and then make a slow journey of it through the night. Mr Schafer has said that he thinks we will take four days to reach Washington, but I have said a week!”

  They talked a while longer – books and London, as always, their main topics. She was fascinated by the accounts of British High Society she had read in the newspapers and begged to know all that he could tell her, accepting that his information was all second hand but more authentic than the tales in the yellow press.

  “I was a country boy, Miss Elizabeth. My acquaintance of society was limited to that of a small part of a deeply agricultural county where we had none of the goings-on of London! I am sure you would have mixed in more elegant society in Washington than did I in Poole!”

  Dick had decided to make no mention of his aristocratic wife – she was dead to him.

  “Hardly at all, sir, and we lived much more in Baltimore than in Washington until my father died. My mother was his second wife and so I am far younger than my brother, but I was brought up to the business, learned my letters and counting from the ledgers more than the classroom. When my mother passed away two years ago I inherited the share left her by my father and became my brother’s partner in the firm – far too commercial a person to mix with the young ladies and their squires!”

  Dick smiled politely and wondered whether he should congratulate her on her business acumen or commiserate with her on her banishment from society.

  “What will you do in wartime, Miss Elizabeth?”

  “I must spend some part of my days in the east. We have warehouses there and a manager who will benefit from knowing that I will be checking his invoices. Should I be able to find a reliable man here, then I may well spend most of my days in Baltimore, in fact, although I have been considering the establishment of a branch in Washington…”

  “I may well be invited to a staff position in Washington myself, I am told, ma’am…”

  It was a risk, but, when one considered the matter dispassionately, bigamy in America was very unlikely to be discovered in England. A wise man might well leave all of his options open, and she was rather an attractive girl - fair-haired, blue-eyed and pleasantly curved - as well as rich.

  Of course, Dick mused, he had only her word for it that she was rich – she might well be overstating her case. He could make enquiries more easily in Washington than in the west – for the while it was still wise to be cautious.

  “It is by no means impossible that we might meet in Washington, ma’am, depending on the war, of course. Enquiry of the regiment will make it easy to find me, I should imagine.”

  “Will it really come to war, to battle, Captain Burke? Surely America is civilised beyond that!”

  Dick had heard the view, expressed in almost the same words, several times before; he admired its determined naiveté.

  “The guns are being loaded even now, Miss Elizabeth. Mr Lincoln cannot accept the Secession of the South and the Southrons cannot swallow the assertion that Federal powers outweigh those of the States. Men of goodwill cannot bridge that irreconcilable gap – and the issue of slavery renders the dispute so much more ill-tempered. In the same way that the French Revolution was inevitable, so is this war – the two parties have nothing to say, one to the other. It is possible that the first battle may serve to bring the two sides to their senses – but it is more probable that the victors will be confirmed in their righteousness while the losers become embittered by their losses. So I have read, ma’am. A year of war and of battles as great as those of the Wars with France, I expect. We shall see ten thousand dead, so I fear.”

  “I shall weep for them, sir.”

  “Many women will weep before this war ends, ma’am.”

  “Why are you fighting, Captain Burke? You are an Englishman, after all, and intend to return one day, so you have told me.”

  “Slavery is wrong, ma’am. And my friends are here and I cannot stand back while they go to fight.”

  It was a facile answer, and contained elements of the truth as well as being welcome to her; Dick wondered, however, just why he was going to battle. Curiosity, perhaps; the chance of profit; drifting for lack of anything better. He was a fool to risk his neck, he supposed, but it was not so valuable a neck as many – he could not care too much whether he died, there was too little of the attractive in living.

  There was every chance of profit, as well, in going to war. He was a captain already, albeit a very inexperienced one – but he had fought, he knew which end the bullet came out, which would be more than a lot of the boys from the Eastern towns would be aware of. Assume there was a series of bloody battles, and that the self-reliant farm-boys of the West fared better than the sheltered townsmen of the older states, then there would be a shortage of officers. A transfer to another battalion, at major’s rank, might well be feasible inside a year.

  The war would be over, probably, before he could bring his new people up to fitness to fight again, and he would have the rank to be listened to in the new state governments that would be formed. More importantly, men who had not chosen to go to war would find themselves despised by all who had.

  A letter arrived next day, Blackjack giving an address in Washington where he could be contacted and proudly announcing that he had tripled their money and expected to do even better when their next consignment of munitions came down from Canada. He had as well ordered half a million percussion caps from German manufacturers, having been told that the English production for the next twelvemonth had already been bought up; the Germans had written that they could supply him within two months, docking New York in May.

  Blackjack had taken out a bank loan to cover the percussion caps, was expecting to make fifty per cent on the deal, after interest had been paid. The Germans were to use a ship under their own flag – a neutral that could not be touched even if the Confederates managed to get warships to sea.

  Dick sat in thought for nearly half an hour after reading the letter, then walked quietly off to the hotel, begged a few minutes of Miss Parsons’ time.

  “Do you know anything of the armaments industry in Europe, ma’am?”

  “Personally, very little, Captain Burke. I do know, however, that Mr Edmonds, who is a merchant of some standing in Baltimore, was in the habit of buying muskets in Liege in Belgium, mainly for the African trade.”

  Dick knew only that the African trade had been made illegal many years before.

  “Was that the business once called the ‘Triangular Trade’, ma’am, long since ended, I believe?”

  “Not so much ‘ended’ as forbidden, Mr Burke. It became, of course, far more profitable on being made unlawful – prices for imported servants rose to very attractive levels. It made Mr Edmonds’ fortune, that I know.”

  “Purchase of percussion rifles
in Liege might perhaps prove a profitable venture, ma’am? I have recently been made aware that the English manufacturers have full order books, and we know that the Americans are also busy. A cargo from Belgium would certainly sell.”

  “Two months to reach Belgium; another month to buy up a shipload and bring the weapons to Antwerp; two more months to cross the Atlantic. Will there still be a war in twenty weeks, Captain Burke?”

  “I believe so, ma’am.”

  “My senior clerk from the Baltimore office could go to Europe – I cannot, a woman could never do business overtly. All of my orders go out by letter under my brother’s name.”

  “I am in contact with Blackjack, the wagon master, who you will have heard of, I think.”

  She admitted that she knew of him, a respected local businessman, in his way.

  “I think he could negotiate a bank loan, Miss Elizabeth, using your firm’s name as well as his, and in partnership. He does not have any great experience of the Atlantic trade and will find it difficult, I doubt not, to make contacts in Belgium. A partnership could make substantial profits, I think.”

  She could do it, of that she was quite certain, but could not be sure it was appropriate; it smacked of profiteering.

  “Should we, sir? Is it right to do so? We are to turn soldiers’ blood into gold in effect – a dubious form of business.”

  “If we do not do it, then the guns may not arrive at all and our soldiers may march into battle carrying ancient flintlocks. Which is worse?”

  She capitulated, said she would take the cars for Baltimore in the morning, carrying his letter to his partner, for speed and safe delivery.

  “My letter will authorise you to employ any capital of mine held by my partner, Miss Elizabeth. It will be in effect a Power of Attorney, permitting you to act in my name while I am at war.”

  “A close partnership indeed, Captain Burke!”

  “It may well be so, ma’am!”

  The battalion loaded onto three trains in very short time on Monday, to Dick’s surprise. Colonel Mayberry was a better businessman than he was a soldier and showed himself easily able to organise the complicated business of moving nearly seven hundred men and all of their equipment. Dick watched him carefully, noticed that he made almost no decisions extempore – he had a written plan prepared, presumably, over weeks of thought.