Weeks died in paces and drills, in little quarrels; trivial wars between the brethren formed by the recruits. Duly, Lane was among them, though not visible in the practise of argument. There was sufficient love for his brothers in spite of their frivolous battles with one another. The discord among them was an observation, a happening against his Father’s Word. He did all he could not to partake, though his brotherly fellows responded most unsatisfyingly.
“Speak, does he not?” inquires one angerly recruit.
“He must be mute; a lame creature. Let him alone, there’s no score to quarreling with speechless persons,” the recruit’s brother replies.
“You say a lot of nothing! Nay, let him be tormented, so then you can prove you wish no burdens on his head, or you’ll be nothing but irrational! By the devil you will be!” a third recruit shrieks.
“By the devil? Is that blasphemy?” comes the fourth.
The second recruit returned, “Close your lips, be it that you are stupid. Fervently stupid. He is but accusing that I am influenced by that god-hating fiend to defend our brother in vain. Understanding things must be for the affluent, as if your tongue was never costly.”
But that third recruit, who remained unmoved, concluded, “Feed me the most stale bread, and it will taste better than your hollow debates, Aran.”
The dimming of the sun crept, and the eyes of the men vanished into deep dark. Lane lay awake for but an hour more, his lonesome state palpable as it had ever been. If it worsened like an ulcer, he would still pray. If it was lifted from his shoulders, and if human love embraced him, he would still pray. Pain made not itself physical, coming onward in a mental conflict, rather.
Within days of more pacing, there came an understanding between them, excluding Lane. They could ask things of each other without becoming mentally disheveled in the instant. In this time, they abandoned their barracks, fleeing them for another kind, being so that there was more havercake and rum there to eat, by the words of one good-seeming officer. Omitting the ratifications, they moved without question, from which praise from that same officer was sewn, but only for a second. Lane let the memories marinate upon him, for even if the other men did not see him, he was conscious of his own presence; when seen by his fellows, it was when he bought gin for the lot of them, and only then.
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He looked to his feet, which were in the black leather of the proper soldier. Shining through rain, treading the yellow filth of the path to the barracks. How long, he wondered, would he walk in peace in such shoes? It seemed it was the final week of residence in the barracks. What life in the army, sitting splayed on the horizon, could promise was considerably less than the rancid barracks. Whatever was the scent of the barracks multiplied on the field, suspecting the sight of corpses. The war of the peninsula cried out for the men.
Days of drilling were not to halt, as what else could be done for a soldier’s skills in hearing once the campaign resumed? November’s doors were closing gates to the war, and no opportunity was to plainly pass. Sergeant Baines could not let pass, he had a duty, and his presence was waning. Looking to the black leather and to the shillings he had, Lane thought without a fence. Still he wore the white of novelty, but the coat of red was patient, and the great coat of grey prepared. Sergeant Baines was not to remain, for his deeds were finished when he declared the depot’s need to be sent to the peninsula. He gave a seemingly righteous score of the requirement of drafts from home to replenish the numbers of the West Kent, and every one of the recruits let the reason be reasonable.
The tongue of the soldier drew at the ready, not to discuss the ludicrous amounts of ale by which he became drunk, but the ludicrous spoils of war. Gleaming gold and little predictions of the imminence of human carcasses, both treasures none of the men had laid eyes on, save for Lane, who passed by a frozen body every day before meeting with Baines. Remarkably, he was to become one of them, had his Father not intervened.
Lane furthered his severance from the remaining men, not sparing a shilling for more gin, and drinking only to the extent at which he did not become drunk. Forsaking any knowledge of him, the recruits were as merry as they had been in the alehouse. But the days of happy tipling-fancied life in the barracks were shortened by the drills. Officers could not bear the incompetence of certain men who frolicked on Ordinary Step before becoming still and lazy on the Quickest Step. And their desires to be merry would remain bastard red withal, though the salt of the barracks remained, separated from the indulgent rum of unclean happiness and ill speech.
When the second barracks came to be, the process was repeated. When the second barracks could no longer be, there came the ship and the words, again, of Sergeant Baines, who was ever less present. Now, the time of peace was surely gone.
