On that first day, when the sun had broken through the mist and shone
upon the army hastening southwards, an English lad, in the ranks of an
infantry regiment, had heard the singing of the Larks high above them.
He was a common village lad, a “Bill” with no more poetry or heroism in
him than any other English Bill; snapped up at Northstow Fair by a
recruiting serjeant, who was caught by his sturdy limbs and healthy
looks; put through the mill of army discipline, and turned out ready to
go anywhere and do anything at command—not so much because it was his
duty, as because it was the lot that life had brought him. He was hardly
well past what we now call schoolboy years, and he went to fight the
French as he used to go to the parson’s school, without asking why he
was to go. He might perhaps have told you, if you had asked him the
question, that trudging along that miry road, heavily laden, and wet
with the drippings of the forest they had just passed through, was not
much livelier than trying to form pothooks under the parson’s vigilant
eye.
When they emerged from the forest into the open, and began to descend
the gentle slope into the hollow by the farmhouse, the sun broke out, as
we have seen, and Bill, like the rest, began to look about him and shake
himself. Looking up at the bit of blue sky, he saw two tiny specks
against it, and now for the first time the Lark’s song caught his ear.
At any other moment it would have caught his ear only, and left his mind
untouched. But it came with the sun, and opened some secret spring under
that red coat, without the wearer knowing it. Bill’s sturdy legs tramped
on as before, but his thoughts had suddenly taken flight. There was
nothing else to think of, and for a minute or two he was away in English
midlands, making his way in heavy boots and gaiters to the fields at
daybreak, with the dew glistening on the turnip-leaves, and the Larks
singing overhead. In those early morning trudges, before work drove all
else from his mind, he used to think of a certain Polly, the blooming
daughter of the blacksmith; so he thought of Polly now. Her vision
stayed awhile, and then gave way to his mother and the rest of them in
that little thatched cottage shrinking away from the road by the
horsepond; and then the Rectory came in sight just beyond, and the old
parson’s black gaiters and knotted stick. Bill, the parson’s schoolboy,
bringing home one day a lark’s nest entire with four eggs, had come upon
the parson by the gate, and shrunk from the look of that stick.
Bill had put the nest behind him, but it was too late; and he was
straightway turned back the way he came, and told to replace the nest
where he found it.
“And mind you do it gently, Bill,” said the old parson, “or the Lord
won’t love you any more!”
To disobey the parson would have been for Bill a sheer impossibility,
though easy enough for other lads. For him the old parson had been in
the place of a father ever since he lost his own; and at home, in
school, in church, or in the village, he often saw the old man many
times a day. Not that he exactly loved him—or at least he was not aware
of it; he had more than once tasted of the big stick, and oftener
deserved it. But in Bill there was a feeling for constituted authority,
which centred itself in those black gaiters and in that bent form with
the grey hair; and it was strengthened by a dim sense of gratitude and
respect; so he turned back without a word, and put back the nest with
all the care he could.
When he came in sight once more, the parson was still at his gate,
looking down the road for him from under the wide brim of his old hat.
“Have you done it, Bill?” he said, and without waiting for an answer,
“will they thrive yet, do ye think?”
“I see the old ’uns about, sir,” says Bill “There’s a chance as they may
take to ’un again, if the eggs be’ant to’ cold ’owever.”
“Then the Lord’ll love you, Bill,” said the old man, quite simply, and
turned away up his garden. And Bill went home too; he told no one the
story, but the parson’s last words got a better hold of him than all the
sermons he had ever heard him preach.
And so it came about that, years afterwards, as he trudged along that
Belgian highroad, besides Polly and his mother and the cottage, he saw
the Rectory and the old parson, standing at the gate—waiting for the
postman, perhaps with news from the seat of war. “I never wrote to ’un,”
thought Bill, “as I said I would, to let ’un see a bit of my scrawlen——”
But a nudge of the elbow from the next man drove all these visions away.
“D’ye hear that, youngster?” said this neighbour, an old Peninsular
veteran, once a serjeant, and now degraded to the ranks for drunkenness;
“d’ye hear that noise in front? That’s a battle, that is, and we’ll be
too late for it, unless Bony fights hard, drat him!”
The pace was quickened, and for several miles they went on in silence,
the sound of battle gradually getting louder. At last it began to die
away; and soon an aide-de-camp came galloping up and spoke to their
colonel, who halted his men in a field by the roadside. Then tumbrils
full of wounded men began to roll slowly along the road, at which Bill
looked at first with rather a wistful gaze. At last night set in, and
they bivouacked on the field as they were.
Early next morning troops began to file past them—infantry, artillery,
and baggage; the cavalry, so Bill was told by his neighbour in the
ranks, was in the rear keeping off the enemy. Bony was coming after
them, sure enough, he said, and the Duke must draw back and get all his
troops together, and get the Prussians too, before he could smash that
old sinner.
At last their turn came to file into the road, and retrace their steps
of yesterday. It was now raining, and already wet and cold, and Bill
simply plodded on like a machine, till a slight descent, and the sight
of the farmhouse, and of the dark forest looming in front of them, told
him that he was again on the ground where the sun had shone and the Lark
sung. And his trials for that day were nearly at end, for no sooner had
they mounted the slope on the further side, than they were ordered to
the right, and turning into the fields by the little cross-track, were
halted between the two roads, and lay down as they were, tired out.