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One whole side of the courtyard within is taken up by the domed mess-room with its necessary adjuncts and offices. Here on the day following Rallywood's interview with Selpdorf, three men lounged over their lunch.
"Grace is not modern and to talk to her makes you tired," Barbara rejoined. "But I'll tell you about the tea-party in the mess-room if you like." "Then you got tea in the cattle boat's mess-room?" "Of course," said Barbara. "Black tea and condensed milk, and a ruffian with red hair whom they called Mike had made some doughnuts with lard like engine-grease.
They were lighter men than the Hussars, and they carried themselves with the swing that is the peculiar right of the Punjab Frontier Force and all Irregular Horse. Like everything else in the Service it has to be learnt, but, unlike many things, it is never forgotten, and remains on the body till death. The great beam-roofed mess-room of the White Hussars was a sight to be remembered.
As far as our recollection of the Canadian tradition of this story serves us, it must have been on the fourth night after the final discomfiture of the plans of Ponteac, and the tenth from the departure of the adventurers, that the officers were assembled in the mess-room, partaking of the scanty and frugal supper to which their long confinement had reduced them.
He was in fact a typical, healthy-looking Britisher, very much like any other man of his class whom one would meet in the mess-room of the British army, in the wardrooms of the fleet, or in the far-off posts of the Empire, where the administrative cogs of the great machine are to be seen at work.
Khem Singh would sit on his own cushion at the Subaltern's feet, drinking heavy, scented anise-seed brandy in great gulps, and telling strange stories of Fort Amara, which had been a palace in the old days, of Begums and Ranees tortured to death aye, in the very vaulted chamber that now served as a Mess-room; would tell stories of Sobraon that made the Subaltern's cheeks flush and tingle with pride of race, and of the Kuka rising from which so much was expected and the foreknowledge of which was shared by a hundred thousand souls.
If he tried to concentrate his thoughts on any particular subject, they slipped away from him in the most perverse manner. He reflected vaguely that this was the kind of mood in which he had of old committed all manner of pleasant follies and youthful indiscretions. And why not? Was he not young, and a free man? How delightful was this solitude after the noise and smoke of the mess-room!
For years back that toast had been drunk, that prayer uttered in just those simple words, and Linforth was wont to gaze round the walls on the portraits of the famous generals who had looked to these barracks and to this mess-room as their home.
His toilet completed, he took a clean shirt from a bundle on one of the neatly arranged shelves and donned the garment. A few more touches, and, spick-and-span, clean and very soldierly looking, he descended to the ground floor. A glance into the mess-room showed him that the noon meal was not yet ready, so be sauntered to the doorway, remaining just inside out of the sun's rays.
As Barry was passing the sergeants' mess-room the door opened and there came out Sergeant Major McFetteridge himself, with two others of the mess. "Good evening, sergeant major," said Barry quietly passing on his way. "Good evening, sir," said the sergeant major with his usual stiff salute. "Oh, it's you, sir," he cried as the light fell upon Barry's face. "We're glad to see you back, sir."
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