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Updated: May 19, 2025
Seven officers are missing." "What are their names?" "Popham, Smart, Drybergh, Arrowsmith " "Anastasius my young cousin is he safe?" hastily interrupted the general. Colonel Blythe shook his head. "I missed him half way up the hill; he was carrying the regimental colour, but when we got into the battery it was in the sergeant-major's hands.
He went away, after taking tea with her, without discerning much hope for him in her good-bye. After that evening she saw and heard nothing of him for a great while. Her fortnightly journeys to the sergeant-major's grave were continued, whenever weather did not hinder them; and Mr. Miller must have known, she thought, of this custom of hers.
At the time of his death the barracks were occupied by the Scots Greys, but when the pathetic circumstances of the sergeant-major's end became known in the town the officers of the Greys offered the services of their fine reed and brass band, that he might have a funeral marked by due military honours.
But Albina played the prude. She received the sergeant-major's attentions very coolly, and cut short his conversational efforts so as to excite him the more. At the same time her mockingly triumphant and provocative glances would contradict the virtuous compression of her lips. Heppner did not at all despair.
Without further mishap we arrived at our destination, and reported to Brigade Headquarters for rations and billets. That night we slept in the Battalion Sergeant-Major's dugout. The next morning I went to a first-aid post and had the gravel picked out of my face.
The door stood open; a hand-bell banged; a clerk darted in from the sergeant-major's rooms, and Captain Chester was revealed seated at the colonel's desk. This in itself was sufficient to induce several officers to stroll in and look inquiringly around. Captain Chester, merely nodding, went on with some writing at which he was engaged.
Shortly after reveille various rumours had been current in the stables and in the barrack-rooms that something had happened at the Heppners'; and just as the men were getting into their places the news spread from one to the other that the sergeant-major's wife was dead. As this was a private and personal matter, it could not give cause for the slightest delay.
It was truly a noble sight to see Lovelace minor come on parade. Every week exactly two seconds late, in the dead silence that followed the sergeant-major's thundered "Parade!" he would dash through the school gate, puffing and blowing, his drum knocking against his equipment, his hat crooked, half his buttons undone.
During this unequal struggle, Mrs. Smith, the widow of the bandmaster of the regiment, who, with the wife of Sergeant-Major Fox and some children, were riding in one of the foremost waggons, came fearlessly up to where the wounded lay, and, tearing strips from her clothing, helped the surgeon to bandage the wounds. The sergeant-major's wife was severely wounded, as was also Fox himself.
And to-day the sergeant-major didn't even seem to be thinking of a pause for luncheon. It therefore happened very opportunely when Captain von Wegstetten, having scarcely listened to the sergeant-major's report, "Nothing new in the battery," said: "Sergeant Schumann, I want to speak to you for a minute."
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