‘LET’S pretend,’ suggested Harold, ‘that we’re Cavaliers and
Roundheads; and _you_ be a Roundhead!’
‘O bother,’ I replied drowsily, ‘we pretended that yesterday; and it’s
not my turn to be a Roundhead, anyhow.’ The fact is, I was lazy, and
the call to arms fell on indifferent ears. We three younger ones were
stretched at length in the orchard. The sun was hot, the season merry
June, and never (I thought) had there been such wealth and riot of
buttercups throughout the lush grass. Green-and-gold was the dominant
key that day. Instead of active ‘pretence’ with its shouts and its
perspiration, how much better—I held—to lie at ease and pretend to
one’s self, in green and golden fancies, slipping the husk and passing,
a careless lounger, through a sleepy imaginary world all gold and
green! But the persistent Harold was not to be fobbed off.
[Illustration: “INSTEAD OF ACTIVE ‘PRETENCE’ WITH ITS SHOUTS AND ITS
PERSPIRATION, HOW MUCH BETTER—I HELD—TO LIE AT EASE AND PRETEND TO
ONE’S SELF, IN GREEN AND GOLDEN FANCIES”]
‘Well then,’ he began afresh, ‘let’s pretend we’re Knights of the Round
Table; and (with a rush) _I’ll_ be Lancelot!’
‘I won’t play unless I’m Lancelot,’ I said. I didn’t mean it really,
but the game of Knights always began with this particular contest.
‘O _please_,’ implored Harold. ‘You know when Edward’s here I never get
a chance of being Lancelot. I haven’t been Lancelot for weeks!’
Then I yielded gracefully. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll be Tristram.’
‘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.
‘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.