The Laird's Luck and Other Fireside Tales Part 27

"'Tisn' no proper light here," said my father, fumbling with the packet, and not caring to own that he could not read. "Come to the house, honest man, and we'll talk it over; for thou'lt sleep with us, no doubt?"

"Ay, and drink to your apple-trees too," the trooper answered very heartily. So my father led the way and we followed, Margery gripping my hand tight, and the rest talking in loud whispers. They guessed what the man's business was.

An hour later, when the ashen f.a.ggot had been lit and the cider-drinking and carolling were fairly started in the kitchen, Margery packed me off to bed; and afterwards came and sat beside me for a while, very silent, listening with me to the voices below.

"Where is Mark?" I asked, for I missed his clear tenor.

"In the parlour. He and father and the soldier are talking there."

"Is Mark going to fight?"

She bent down, slipped an arm round my nee' and caught me to her in a sudden breathless hug.

"But he may be killed," I objected.

"No, no; we must pray against that." She said it confidently, and I knew Margery had a firm belief that what was prayed for fitly must be granted. "I will see to that, morning and evening: we will pray together. But you must pray sometimes between whiles, when I am not by to remind you--many times a day--promise me, Jack."

I promised, and it made me feel better. Margery had a way of managing things, a way which I had learned to trust. We said no more but Good-night: in a little while she left me and I jumped out of bed and punctually started to keep my new promise.

Next morning--Christmas Day--we all attended church together; that is to say, all we of the family, for our guest chose rather to remain in the parlour with the cider-mug. Parson Kendall preached to us at length on Obedience and the authority delegated by G.o.d upon kings; and working back to his text, which was I. Samuel, xvii. 42, wound up with some particular commendation of "the young man to-day going forth from amongst us"--which turned all heads towards the Lawhibbet pew and set Mark blushing and me almost as shamefacedly, but Margery, after the first flow of colour, turned towards her brother with bright proud eyes.

That same afternoon between three and four o'clock--so suddenly was all decided--Mark rode away from us on the young sorrel, and the trooper beside him, to join the force Sir Bevill Grenvill was collecting for Sir Ralph Hopton at Liskeard. To his father he said good-bye at the yard-gate, but Margery and I walked beside the horses to the ford and afterwards stood and watched their crossing, waving many times as Mark turned and waved a hand back, and the red sun over behind us blinked on the trooper's cap and shoulder-piece. Just before they disappeared we turned away together--for it is unlucky to watch anyone out of sight--and I saw that Margery was trembling from head to foot.

"But he will come back," said I, to comfort her.

"Yes," she answered, "he will come back." With that she paused, and broke forth, twisting her handkerchief, "Jack, if I were a man--" and so checked herself.

"Why, you think more of the Cause than Mark does, I believe!" I put in.

"Not more than Mark--not more than Mark! Jack, you mustn't say that: you mustn't think it!"

"And a great deal more of our name," I went on st.u.r.dily, disregarding her tone, which I considered vehement beyond reason. "'Tis a strange thing to me, Margery, that of us three you should be the one to think everything of the name of Lantine, who are a girl and must take another when you marry."

She halted and turned on me with more anger than I had ever seen on her face. She even stamped her foot. "Never!" she said, and again "Never!"

"Oh, well--" I began; but she had started walking rapidly, and although I caught her up, not another word would she say to me until we reached home.

For a year we saw no more of our brother, and received of him only two letters (for he hated penwork), the both very cheerful. Yet within a month of his going, on a still clear day in January, we listened together to the noise of a pitched battle in which he was fighting, a short six miles from us as the crow flies. I have often admired how men who were happily born too late to witness the troubles of those times will make their own pictures of warfare, as though it changed at once the whole face of the country and tenour of folk's lives; whereas it would be raging two valleys away and men upon their own farms ploughing to the tune of it, with nothing seen by them then or afterwards; or it would leap suddenly across the hills, filling the roads with cursing weary men, and roll by, leaving a sharp track of ruin for the eye to follow and remember it by. So on this afternoon, when Hopton and the Cornish troops were engaging and defeating Ruthen on Braddock Down, Margery and I counted the rattles of musketry borne down to us on the still reaches of the river and, climbing to the earthwork past the field where old Will Retallack stuck to his ploughing with an army of gulls following and wheeling about him as usual, spied the smoke rolling over the edge of Boconnoc woodland to the north-east; but never a soldier we saw that day or for months after.

A little before the end of the day the rebel army broke and began to roll back through Liskeard and towards the pa.s.ses of the Tamar, and Mark followed with his troops to Saltash, into Devonshire, and as far as Chagford, where he rode by Mr. Sydney G.o.dolphin in the skirmish which gave that valiant young gentleman his mortal wound. Soon after the whole of the King's forces retired upon Tavistock, where a truce was patched up between the opposing factions in the West. But this did not release Mark, who was kept at duty on the border until May--when the strife burst out again--and joined the pursuit after Stratton Heath. Thereafter he fought at Lansdowne, and in the operations against Bristol, and later in the same year, having won a cornetcy in the King's Horse, bore his part in the many brisk expeditions led by Hopton through Dorsetshire and Hampshire into Suss.e.x.

'Twas from Worthing he came back to us a few days before Christmas, and his mission was to beat up recruits for his troop in the season of slackness before the Spring campaign. He had grown almost two inches, his chest was fuller, his voice manly, and his handsome face not spoiled (Margery declared it improved) by a scar across the cheek, won in a raid upon Poole. He had borne himself gallantly, and our prayers had prevailed with G.o.d to save him from serious hurt even in the furious charge at Lansdowne, when of two thousand horse no more than six hundred reached the crest of the hill. He greeted us all lovingly and made no disguise of his joy to be at home again, though but on a short furlough.

And yet even on the first happy evening, when we walked up through the dusk together to the old earthwork, and he told us the first chapter of his adventures, I seemed to see, or rather to feel, that our brother was not wholly a better man for his campaigning. To be sure, a soldier must be allowed an oath or two; but Mark slipped out one before his sister which took me like a slap across the cheek. He bit his lip the moment it was out, and talked rapidly and at random for a while, with a dark flush on his face. Margery pretended that she had not heard, and for the rest he told his story with a manly carelessness which became him. Once only, when he described the entry of the troops into Bristol and their behaviour there--while Margery turned her eyes aside for a moment, that were dim for the death of Slanning and Trevanion--he came to a pause with a grin that invited me to be knowing beyond my years. The old Mark would never have looked at me with that meaning.

On the whole he behaved well, and took Margery's adoration with great patience. He had the wit to wish to fall nothing in her eyes. His new and earthlier view of war, as a game with coa.r.s.e rewards, he confided to me; and this not in words but in a smile now and then and a general air when safe from his sister's eyes, of being pa.s.sably amused by her high-fangled nonsense. His business of beating up recruits took him away from us for days together; and we missed him on Christmas Eve when we christened the apple-trees as usual. It was I who discovered and kept it from Margery--who supposed him as far away as St. Austell, and tried to find that distance a sufficient excuse--that he had spent the night a bare mile away, hobn.o.bbing with the owner of Lantine, a rich man who had used to look down on our family but thought it worth while to make friends with this promising young soldier.

"And I mean to be equal with him and his likes," said Mark to me afterwards by way of excuse. "A man may rise by soldiering as by any other calling--and quicker too, perhaps, in these days."

The same thought clearly was running in his head a week later, when he took leave of us once more by the ford.

"Come back to us, Mark!" Margery wept this time, with her arms about his neck.

"Ay, sweetheart, and with an estate in my pocket."

"Ah, forget that old folly! Come back with body safe and honour bright, and G.o.d may take the rest."

He slapped his pocket with a laugh as he shook up the reins.

Then followed five quiet anxious months. 'Twas not until early in June that, by an express from Ashburton in Devon, we heard that our brother's fortune was still rising, he having succeeded to the command of his company made vacant by the wounding of Captain Sir Harry Welcome. "And this is no mean achievement for a poor yeoman's son," he wrote, "in an army where promotion goes as a rule to them that have estates to p.a.w.n. But I hope in these days some few may serve his Majesty and yet prosper, and that my dear Margery may yet have her wish and be mistress in Lantine." Margery read this letter and knit her brow thoughtfully. "It was like Mark to think of writing so," said she; "but I have not thought of Lantine for this many a day."

"And he might have left thinking of it," said I, "until these troubles are over and the King's peace established."

"Tut," she answered smiling, "he does not think of it but only to please me. 'Tis his way to speak what comes to his tongue to give us pleasure."

"For all that, he need not have misjudged us," I grumbled; and then was sorry for the pain with which she looked at me.

"It is you, Jack, who misjudged!" She spoke it sharply. We still prayed together for our brother twice a day; but she knew--and either dared not or cared not to ask why--that since his first home-coming my love had cooled towards him. Very likely she believed me to be jealous.

The hay-harvest found and pa.s.sed us in peace, and the wheat was near ripe, when, towards the close of July, rumours came to us of an army marching towards Cornwall under command of the Earl of Ess.e.x; by persuasion (it was said) of the Lord Robarts, whose seat of Lanhydrock lies on our bank of the river about three miles above Lostwithiel, facing the Lord Mohun's house of Boconnoc across the valley. My Lord Mohun, after some wavering at first, had cast in his fortune with the King's party, to which belonged well nigh all the gentry of our neighbourhood; and had done so in good time for his reputation. But the Lord Robarts was an obstinate clever man who chose the other side and stuck to it in despite of first misfortunes. We guessed therefore that if the Parliamentarians came by his invitation they would not neglect a district on which he staked so much for mastery; and sure enough, about July 25th, we heard that Ess.e.x had reached Bodmin with the ma.s.s of his forces, Sir Richard Grenvill having retired before him and moved hastily with the Queen's troop to Truro. After this, Margery and I used to climb every morning to the earthwork and spy all the country round for signs of the hated troopers. Yet day pa.s.sed after day with nought to be seen, and little to be heard but further rumours, of which the most constant said that the King himself was following Ess.e.x with an army, and had already seized and crossed the pa.s.ses of the Tamar.

'Twas on the 2nd of August that the bolt fell; when after mounting the slope at daybreak with nothing to warn us, we stepped through the d.y.k.es into the old camp. A heavy dew hung in beads on the brambles, and at the second d.y.k.e I had turned and was holding aside a brier to let Margery pa.s.s, when a short cry from her fetched me right-about and staring into the face of a tall soldier grinning at us over the bank.

In the enclosure behind him (as we saw through a gap) were a number of men in mud-coloured jerkins, quietly mounting a couple of cannon.

"Good morning!" said the soldier amiably, with an up-country tw.a.n.g in his voice, "Good-morning, my pretty dears! And if you come from the farm below, what may be the name of it?"

"Lawhibbet," I answered, seeing that Margery closed her lips tight.

"Ay, Lawhibbet; that's the name I was told." He nodded in the friendliest manner.

"Are you the rebels?" I blurted out, while Margery gripped my arm; but this boldness only fetched a laugh from the big man.

"Some of 'em," said he; "though you'll have to unlearn that name, my young whipsterc.o.c.k, seein' we're here to stay for a while. The Earl marched down into Fowey last night while you were asleep, and is down there now making it right and tight. Do you ever play at blind-man's buff in these parts?"

Three or four soldiers had gathered behind him by this, and were staring down on us. One of them blew a clumsy kiss to Margery.

"Do you mean the child's game?" I asked, wondering whatever he could be driving at.

"I do; but perhaps, sir, you are too old to remember it." He winked at the men and they guffawed. "It begins, 'How many horses has your father got?' 'Six,' says you; 'black, red, and grey'--or that's the number according to our instructions. 'Very good then,' says we; 'turn round three times and catch which you may.' And the moral is, don't be surprised if you find the stable empty when you get home. There's a detachment gone to attend to it after seizing the ford below; hungry men, all of them. No doubt they'll be visiting the bacon-rack after the stable, and if missy knows where to pick up the new-laid eggs she might put a score aside for us poor artillerymen."

We turned from them and hurried down the slope. "Rebels!" said Margery once, under her breath; but the blow had stunned us and we could not talk. In the stable yard we found, as the artillerymen had promised, a company of soldiers leading out the horses, and my father watching them with that patient look which never deserted him. He turned to Margery--

"Go into the kitchen, my dear. They will want food next, and we have to do what we can. They have been civil, and promise to pay for all they take. I do not think they will show any roughness."

Margery obeyed with a set face. For the next hour she and Lizzie were busy in the kitchen, frying ham and eggs, boiling great pans of milk, cutting up all the bread of the last baking, and heating the oven for a fresh batch. The men, I am bound to say, took their food civilly, that morning and afterwards; and for a fortnight at least they paid reasonably for all they took. For several days I hung closer about the ingle than ever I had done in my life; not that a boy of fourteen could be any protection to the women-folk, but to be ready at least to give an alarm should insult be offered. But we had to do with decent men, who showed themselves friendly not only in the house but in their camp down by the ford, whither, after the first morning, Lizzie and I trudged it twice a day with baskets of provisions. Lizzie indeed talked freely with them, but I held my tongue and glowered (I dare say) in my foolish hate. Margery kept to the house.

'Twas, I think, on August 15th that the first hope of release came to us, by the King's troops seizing the ford-head across the river; and this happened as suddenly as our first surprise. Lizzie and I were carrying down our baskets at four o'clock that day, when we heard a sound of musketry on the St. Veep sh.o.r.e and on top of it a bugle twice blown. Running to the top of a knoll from which the river spread in view, I saw some rebels of our detachment splashing out from sh.o.r.e in a hurry. The leaders reached mid-stream or thereabouts, and paused.

Doubtless they could see better than I what was happening; for after they had stood there a couple of minutes, holding their fire--the musketry on the St. Veep bank continuing all the while--some twenty men came running out of the woods there and fled across towards us, many bullets splashing into the water behind them. They reached their comrades in the river-bed, and the whole body stood irresolute, facing the sh.o.r.e where nothing showed but a glint of steel here and there between the trees. Thus for ten further minutes, perhaps, they hesitated; then turned and came sullenly back across the rising water.