‘Beaten, decidedly beaten, bad luck to them! The only chance Sir David
has left is to slip off in the night, grope for a ford higher up the
stream, and pass his artillery over as best he may. I could lay a wager
that he tries it.’
‘Not he,’ returned a gruffer voice. ‘Moffat’s too wary to be caught
napping. The sly old fox was almost too many for us though, when he
made that forced march, and all but captured the bridge by a swoop of
his cavalry.’
‘Ah!’ chimed in a third officer of the group now eating a hurried
supper around a bivouac fire, the glow of which was doubly welcome
from the fact that the uniforms of all present had been drenched and
soaked with the heavy rain that had fallen that day—‘Ah! tell it not
in Gath; but it was the quickness of those militia fellows—the Devon
Light Infantry, or whatever they call themselves—that saved us. The
enemy’s cavalry were just clattering over the bridge, when that militia
regiment threw out its skirmishers, in very smart style too, and saved
the chief from a checkmate.’
‘That was Harrogate’s doing,’ observed the first speaker; ‘he’s their
acting-major just now, and I saw him on horseback at the bridge-foot.
A first-rate fellow he is, and could teach a lesson to some of our
pompous bigwigs in cocked-hat and feather. All the same, I’d not work
as he does, if I were a lord.’
‘You had better leave off chattering, you youngsters, and get forty
winks,’ said the good-natured senior with the gruff voice. ‘It’s ten
to one Moffat has us under arms and on the march a good hour before
daybreak. I learned his ways in India, when we were following Tantia
Topee and the Nana up hill and down dale. As for me, I’ve the rounds
to-night, and—— Well, sergeant; what is it?’ he added, as he tightened
his belt.
‘A civilian, sir, that wants to be passed to the quarters of an officer
of the Devon militia, on important business, he says. He has come in a
gig from Downton, and the picket stopped him on the Whiteparish road.’
‘It’s a spy of old Sir David’s!’ exclaimed one of the subalterns,
jumping to his feet; ‘one of the enemy in plain clothes sent to
reconnoitre within our lines. I suppose it wouldn’t quite do to hang
him, though!’
‘A London tailor, more likely,’ said another of the young men, with a
laugh. ‘Too bad, I call it, to be dunned down here, and pestered with
bills, when one is wearing out one’s clothes and wetting one’s feet in
the service of an ungrateful country.—What sort of man is he, sergeant?’
‘A sailor-looking fellow, sir—from abroad, I should judge—dressed very
respectable,’ returned the sergeant, again lifting his hand to the
peak of his cap. ‘It’s Lord Harrogate he wants to see—on particular
business, he says.’
There was some little discussion as to whether the stranger should
be allowed to proceed. Strictly speaking, every British subject has
a right to go where he lists, within the four seas, upon a lawful
errand; but there are exceptions to this abstract right, in practice,
if not in theory. This was one of them. The Autumn Manœuvres were
going on, and two generals of great Indian renown, Sir David Roberts,
and Lord Moffat, but lately promoted to the peerage on account of his
long and good service, were pitted against one another in that larger
_Kriegspiel_ or game of war which we call a sham campaign.
Sir David commanded the ‘enemy,’ and his business was to get within
striking distance of London, if his strategy should prove superior to
that of his old comrade and rival. He was supposed to have landed a
powerful foreign force at Poole, Weymouth, or Christchurch, and now
to be pushing vigorously on, scattering the local levies as he came
towards the capital. It was Lord Moffat’s more popular task to defend
London and beat back the invader to his ships.
There had been much marching and countermarching. The forces employed,
men and officers alike, had entered into the mimic contest with
the heartiness of so many schoolboys intent upon their play. Their
willing obedience knew no bounds. When the commissariat—as is the
nature of commissariats—was behind-hand with their food, they marched,
dinnerless, and bore cheerfully every hardship that dust, rain, hunger,
and fatigue could inflict. The men disguised their footsore condition
that the regiment might have full ranks when the mock-fight should
come. The officers scarcely grumbled over the heavy bills which the
spoiling of their new uniforms entailed.
Lord Moffat, the national defender, to the great joy of his army and
the delight of the newspaper correspondents, was getting the best of
it. But the wily Sir David and his invading hordes had been within an
ace, if not of victory, at least of that upper hand which goes far
in sham war as in real war. By a stolen flank-march he had all but
captured the only available bridge across the Lene, on the swift stream
and deep though narrow channel of which his veteran antagonist had
relied perhaps a little too implicitly.
Sir David’s Hussars and Lancers had come charging down upon the feebly
guarded bridge across the Lene, unexpectedly, when every one in Lord
Moffat’s camp believed them to be miles away. Five minutes more of
panic and indecision would have given up to the ‘enemy’ the hill-road
that skirted the downs, and led direct to Aldershot and London.
Luckily, the militia regiment posted nearest to the river was in a
state of unusually stringent discipline, and had in Lord Harrogate
an officer who could be cool and firm at a moment’s warning. The
skirmishers of the regiment of which he was now acting-major had lined
the bank with magical quickness, and the battalion had come swiftly on
to pour blank-cartridge into the hostile squadrons. Horse, foot, and
guns had come to the help of the men of Devon, and Sir David’s daring
onslaught had been repulsed.
All this sounds very childish, possibly, to those who, at a distance
from the scene of strife, only read of it through the cold medium of
printed words. But to those who took part in the fray and were all
on fire with the keen contagion of the excitement, it was very real.
So many stratagems were reputed to be in use for the obtaining of
information, so much of the success of either friendly belligerent
must depend on secrecy as to his movements, that it is no wonder if a
stranger was regarded with extreme suspicion when presenting himself at
the outposts.
Had this stranger asked for a less popular officer than Lord Harrogate,
it is probable that he would have met with every conceivable impediment
in the further prosecution of his researches. But, apart from that
shadowy halo of respect which, as such, still surrounds those born in
the purple, Lord Harrogate was a man never named but with respect, and
on account of his service at the bridge was the hero of the hour.
‘I’ll take him with me as far as the post of the Devon militia,’ said
the gruff field-officer, who had now completed the tightening of his
belt and the adjustment of his cloak. ‘My orderly must look after him,
sergeant.’
Lord Harrogate, in the act of receiving the reports for the night, with
some surprise beheld Richard Hold, master-mariner, marched up under
escort to the door of his hastily pitched tent. He knew the man at
once. That sallow, swarthy countenance had attracted some notice in the
quiet Devonshire country-side near High Tor.
‘You want me, then, it seems, Mr’—— began the future Earl of
Wolverhampton.
‘Hold, my lord! Dick Hold, very much at your service!’ returned
the seaman, ‘if these men’—with a half-angry glance at the file of
militia privates to left and right, and the pink-faced young corporal
who, stiff as a ramrod, commanded the guard—‘would give a fellow
breathing-time.’
At a sign from Lord Harrogate, the escort fell back, and Richard Hold
was at liberty to speak. ‘Did your lordship ever hear what happens to a
pig when he swims?’ asked the seaman abruptly; and without giving his
auditor leisure to reply to the queer question, he resumed: ‘He cuts
his throat, they say; and so do I, maybe, in speaking as I’m going to
do. I’ve been paid for silence until it goes agin me to speak, even to
spoil the game of one who hasn’t used me well.’
Lord Harrogate, smiling, looked steadily at the man, and read a good
deal of his character at a glance.
‘Vain, shrewd, boastful, and a bully;’ such was his rapid summary of
Hold’s qualities; ‘but with a stout heart to back his bullying, which
is not a common conjunction. The fellow must be smarting under some
sense of injury, or he would not be here.’
He saw too that Mr Hold was in that peculiar condition as to the
effects of liquor which police constables delicately define when they
say that the prisoner at the bar ‘had been drinking, but was not tipsy.’
Now, no suspicion that the stranger was even flustered by drink had
entered the minds of his late military custodians, or he would never
have been admitted within the pickets. Hold, when questioned before,
had seemed as sober as a Good Templar. There is, however, as men of the
world know, such a thing as latent intoxication, precisely as there is
such a thing as latent heat; and even such a seasoned vessel as Richard
Hold may suddenly, under excitement, feel the staggering effects of
brandy swallowed hours ago.
‘It was on business, I think, that you had to speak to me?’ said Lord
Harrogate cheerfully.
‘Business, I guess, can be of more sorts than one,’ rapped out the
seaman argumentatively. ‘To reeve a rope for a rogue’s neck is one sort
o’ business; and to clinker on the irons of the chain-gang at Perth, W.
A., or Bermuda, or Gib (I’ve seen the convicts most everywhere; though,
mind ye, I never wore the Queen’s canary-suit), is another. Rough
customers are most of those that get a sentence of penal servitude.
It’s on a gentleman—say on Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet—the punishment
falls the heaviest.’
‘What do you mean? Or by what right do you drag the name of a landed
gentleman of high position into your rambling talk?’ asked Lord
Harrogate, very sternly.
Hold, as though the young man’s severe demeanour had excited instead of
sobering him, broke into a crowing laugh of scorn. ‘That mealy-mouthed
hypocrite!’ he exclaimed; ‘and he, forsooth, is a gentleman of high
position, to play skipper to my swabber, I suppose, though I’ve more
pluck in my little finger than Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet, has in his
whole body. It isn’t to a poor young thing—and she a widow and a
lady—I’d owe a grudge, and still less to an innocent baby-girl that
had no more harmed him than—— If it were all to come over again, I’m as
certain as I stand here that I’d have gone to that young Lady Harrogate
herself, and said’——
Something here seemed to flit across Hold’s clouded mind, for he
started, bit his lip, and became silent.
‘Did you know that young Lady Harrogate of whom you have made mention,
and who has been long dead?’ asked Lord Harrogate encouragingly.
‘Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t,’ grudgingly returned Richard, whose
vein of communicativeness no longer flowed freely. ‘I’ve had sunstroke,
mister, and knocks on the head too, on the topsy-turvy side of the
world, that ought to excuse me if I talk a bit wild when I get liquor
aboard. I’m Jack Ashore. Nobody minds a sailor.’
It was in vain that Lord Harrogate plied him with questions. A change
had come over the man’s mood, and his dogged caution was as prominent
as had lately been his garrulous bravado. It was evident that he
regretted his recent avowal, and that being unable to recall it, he
would say no more. Then came muffled noises from without, a single low
roll of the drum, and the passing of the word from man to man.
‘The brigade to which you are attached, Lord Harrogate, is to get under
arms and march at once,’ said an aide-de-camp, putting his head into
the canvas doorway of the tent. ‘“Quick and silent,” are Lord Moffat’s
orders.’
‘You must make your mind up, Mr Hold,’ said the young lord, as he
caught up his sword and buckled it on, ‘as to whether you prefer to
speak, or to have had your journey for nothing.’
The master-mariner shook his head sullenly. ‘You titled swells back one
another, right or wrong,’ he muttered querulously. ‘A plain man like me
might have known it.’
‘I back nobody in wrong, for my poor part,’ replied Lord Harrogate, as
he made his hasty preparations for a start. His soldier-servant was
already aiding a couple of privates to strike the tent.
‘I don’t believe you do, my lord!’ exclaimed Hold irresolutely; ‘you
don’t fly false colours at the main, whoever does. If you knew that a
girl, as noble in blood as yourself, was robbed of her rights, and made
to pass for a mere nobody’s child, in the very place that’——
‘Harrogate, the colonel only waits for you!’ cried the breathless
adjutant, as he stood panting at the door. Without, was heard the
steady tramp of marching feet and the rattle of arms.
‘One moment, Vicars!’ said Lord Harrogate.—‘You see, Mr Hold, go I
must. Will you give me some address, at which this conversation can be
renewed?’
Almost mechanically, Dick drew out one of the cards of Old Plugger’s.
‘I’ll look you up there,’ cried Lord Harrogate, as he darted out into
the night. Then came the smothered sound of voices, as the words of
command were given, and then the regular hurried tramp of many feet.
The brigade had marched, leaving Mr Richard Hold to regain his gig, his
railway station, and ultimately London, as best he might.