'O, but you can't,' cried Harold again. 'Charlotte has always been
Tristram. She won't play unless she's allowed to be Tristram! Be
somebody else this time.'
Charlotte said nothing, but breathed hard, looking straight before her.
The peerless hunter and harper was her special hero of romance, and
rather than see the part in less appreciative hands, she would have gone
back in tears to the stuffy schoolroom.
'I don't care,' I said: 'I'll be anything. I'll be Sir Kay. Come on!'
Then once more in this country's story the mail-clad knights paced
through the greenwood shaw, questing adventure, redressing wrong; and
bandits, five to one, broke and fled discomfited to their caves. Once
more were damsels rescued, dragons disembowelled, and giants, in every
corner of the orchard, deprived of their already superfluous number of
heads; while Palomides the Saracen waited for us by the well, and Sir
Breuse Saunce Pité vanished in craven flight before the skilled spear
that was his terror and his bane. Once more the lists were dight in
Camelot, and all was gay with shimmer of silk and gold; the earth shook
with thunder of hooves, ash-staves flew in splinters, and the firmament
rang to the clash of sword on helm. The varying fortune of the day swung
doubtful--now on this side, now on that; till at last Lancelot, grim and
great, thrusting through the press, unhorsed Sir Tristram (an easy
task), and bestrode her, threatening doom; while the Cornish knight,
forgetting hard-won fame of old, cried piteously, 'You're hurting me, I
tell you! and you're tearing my frock!' Then it happed that Sir Kay,
hurtling to the rescue, stopped short in his stride, catching sight
suddenly, through apple-boughs, of a gleam of scarlet afar off; while
the confused tramp of many horses, mingled with talk and laughter, was
borne to the ears of his fellow-champions and himself.
[Illustration: '_Once more were damsels rescued, dragons disembowelled,
and giants_']
'What is it?' inquired Tristram, sitting up and shaking out her curls;
while Lancelot forsook the clanging lists and trotted nimbly to the
boundary-hedge.
I stood spell-bound for a moment longer, and then, with a cry of
'Soldiers!' I was off to the hedge, Sir Tristram picking herself up and
scurrying after us.
Down the road they came, two and two, at an easy walk; scarlet flamed in
the eye, bits jingled and saddles squeaked delightfully; while the men,
in a halo of dust, smoked their short clays like the heroes they were.
In a swirl of intoxicating glory the troop clinked and clattered by,
while we shouted and waved, jumping up and down, and the big jolly
horsemen acknowledged the salute with easy condescension. The moment
they were past we were through the hedge and after them. Soldiers were
not the common stuff of everyday life. There had been nothing like this
since the winter before last, when on a certain afternoon--bare of leaf
and monochromatic in its hue of sodden fallow and frost-nipt
copse--suddenly the hounds had burst through the fence with their mellow
cry, and all the paddock was for the minute reverberant of thudding hoof
and dotted with glancing red. But this was better, since it could only
mean that blows and bloodshed were in the air.
'Is there going to be a battle?' panted Harold, hardly able to keep up
for excitement.
'Of course there is,' I replied. 'We're just in time. Come on!'
Perhaps I ought to have known better; and yet----? The pigs and poultry,
with whom we chiefly consorted, could instruct us little concerning the
peace that lapped in these latter days our seagirt realm. In the
schoolroom we were just now dallying with the Wars of the Roses; and
did not legends of the country-side inform us how cavaliers had once
galloped up and down these very lanes from their quarters in the
village? Here, now, were soldiers unmistakable; and if their business
was not fighting, what was it? Sniffing the joy of battle, we followed
hard in their tracks.
'Won't Edward be sorry,' puffed Harold, 'that he's begun that beastly
Latin?'
It did, indeed, seem hard. Edward, the most martial spirit of us all,
was drearily conjugating _amo_ (of all verbs!) between four walls; while
Selina, who ever thrilled ecstatic to a red coat, was struggling with
the uncouth German tongue. 'Age,' I reflected, 'carries its penalties.'
It was a grievous disappointment to us that the troop passed through the
village unmolested. Every cottage, I pointed out to my companions, ought
to have been loopholed, and strongly held. But no opposition was offered
to the soldiers: who, indeed, conducted themselves with a recklessness
and a want of precaution that seemed simply criminal.
At the last cottage a transitory gleam of common sense flickered across
me, and, turning on Charlotte, I sternly ordered her back. The small
maiden, docile but exceedingly dolorous, dragged reluctant feet
homewards, heavy at heart that she was to behold no stout fellows slain
that day; but Harold and I held steadily on, expecting every instant to
see the environing hedges crackle and spit forth the leaden death.
'Will they be Indians?' asked my brother (meaning the enemy) 'or
Roundheads, or what?'
I reflected. Harold always required direct straightforward answers--not
faltering suppositions.
'They won't be Indians,' I replied at last; 'nor yet Roundheads. There
haven't been any Roundheads seen about here for a long time. They'll be
Frenchmen.'
Harold's face fell. 'All right,' he said: 'Frenchmen'll do; but I did
hope they'd be Indians.'
'If they were going to be Indians,' I explained, 'I--I don't think I'd
go on. Because when Indians take you prisoner they scalp you first, and
then burn you at the stake. But Frenchmen don't do that sort of thing.'
'Are you quite sure?' asked Harold doubtfully.
'Quite,' I replied. 'Frenchmen only shut you up in a thing called the
Bastille; and then you get a file sent in to you in a loaf of bread, and
saw the bars through, and slide down a rope, and they all fire at
you--but they don't hit you--and you run down to the seashore as hard as
you can, and swim off to a British frigate, and there you are!'
Harold brightened up again. The programme was rather attractive. 'If
they try to take us prisoner,' he said, 'we--we won't run, will we?'
Meanwhile, the craven foe was a long time showing himself; and we were
reaching strange outland country, uncivilised, wherein lions might be
expected to prowl at nightfall. I had a stitch in my side, and both
Harold's stockings had come down. Just as I was beginning to have gloomy
doubts of the proverbial courage of Frenchmen, the officer called out
something, the men closed up, and, breaking into a trot, the
troops--already far ahead--vanished out of our sight. With a sinking at
the heart, I began to suspect we had been fooled.
'Are they charging?' cried Harold, very weary, but rallying gamely.
'I think not,' I replied doubtfully. 'When there's going to be a charge,
the officer always makes a speech, and then they draw their swords and
the trumpets blow, and----but let's try a short cut. We may catch them
up yet.'
So we struck across the fields and into another road, and pounded down
that, and then over more fields, panting, down-hearted, yet hoping for
the best. The sun went in, and a thin drizzle began to fall; we were
muddy, breathless, almost dead-beat; but we blundered on, till at last
we struck a road more brutally, more callously unfamiliar than any road
I ever looked upon. Not a hint nor a sign of friendly direction or
assistance on the dogged white face of it! There was no longer any
disguising it: we were hopelessly lost. The small rain continued
steadily, the evening began to come on. Really there are moments when a
fellow is justified in crying; and I would have cried too, if Harold had
not been there. That right-minded child regarded an elder brother as a
veritable god; and I could see that he felt himself as secure as if a
whole Brigade of Guards had hedged him round with protecting bayonets.
But I dreaded sore lest he should begin again with his questions.
As I gazed in dumb appeal on the face of unresponsive nature, the sound
of nearing wheels sent a pulse of hope through my being: increasing to
rapture as I recognised in the approaching vehicle the familiar carriage
of the old doctor. If ever a god emerged from a machine, it was when
this heaven-sent friend, recognising us, stopped and jumped out with a
cheery hail. Harold rushed up to him at once. 'Have you been there?' he
cried. 'Was it a jolly fight? who beat? were there many people killed?'
The doctor appeared puzzled. I briefly explained the situation.
'I see,' said the doctor, looking grave and twisting his face this way
and that. 'Well, the fact is, there isn't going to be any battle to-day.
It's been put off, on account of the change in the weather. You will
have due notice of the renewal of hostilities. And now you'd better jump
in and I'll drive you home. You've been running a fine rig! Why, you
might have both been taken and shot as spies!'
This special danger had never even occurred to us. The thrill of it
accentuated the cosy homelike feeling of the cushions we nestled into as
we rolled homewards. The doctor beguiled the journey with blood-curdling
narratives of personal adventure in the tented field, he having followed
the profession of arms (so it seemed) in every quarter of the globe.
Time, the destroyer of all things beautiful, subsequently revealed the
baselessness of these legends; but what of that? There are higher things
than truth; and we were almost reconciled, by the time we were put down
at our gate, to the fact that the battle had been postponed.