The Queen's Scarlet Part 19

"But he does not know--he does not know," muttered the lad, as he turned now and walked back toward the town street, down which he hurried with the intention of finding a quiet place where he could have a meal, and turned at last into a coffee-house, where he ordered tea and bread-and-b.u.t.ter, drinking the former with avidity, for he was feverishly thirsty, but the first mouthful of food seemed as if it would choke him, and he took no more.

Half an hour later he had another cup of tea, for his thirst seemed greater, and after that he went and wandered about the town, finding most rest in the shade of the great ruined Castle Keep, where the jackdaws sailed round, and cawed at him as if they were old friends from Primchilsea who recognised him and called out to their companions that he was below.

"What should he do," he thought; "what should he do?" For his plan had been completely checked, and in the most unexpected way.

He was sick at heart and faint in body, but his spirit was not crushed.

He had laid his hand to the plough, and if a hundred good-tempered well-meaning fat sergeants came or gave their advice he could not look back. No; he must sleep at Ratcham that night, and make for Quitnesbury in the morning. There was a cavalry depot there; and if he failed again, he could go on to Ranstone.

"There must be regiments where they would take me," he muttered, as he walked back toward the town in the pleasant sunny evening; and, as if attracted by the place, he made his way again towards the barracks, thinking of the fat sergeant, and in his utter loneliness feeling a yearning to meet him again for a friendly chat, if it were possible.

"What did they call him--Lambert?" thought Richard. "Absurd! That was only banter on the part of his companions. I wonder whether I shall ever see him again!"

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

IN PIPE-CLAYDOM.

There was still none of the pageant and display of a military life visible to Richard as he re-entered the great gateway, before which a sentry in white flannel jacket and forage cap was marching to and fro with a bayonet in his hand, ready to give a glance at the lad and then turn upon his heels and march away.

The lad walked forward as if he had business there, and went on, wondering what the stout sergeant's name was, but not liking to stop and ask. Then on straight across the great dreary barrack yard, surrounded on all sides by bare-looking buildings, full of open windows, at one of which he saw a pair of folded arms and the top of a closely-cropped head, the owner thereof being evidently asleep. At another window there was a pair of boot-soles, and at another a man, in shirt and trousers, seated sidewise upon the sill, with his knees drawn up so as to form a reading-desk, upon which a paper was spread, which the man, with his hands behind his head, was perusing.

A little farther on there was a cat asleep, and just above it a canary in a cage twittering away as if in friendly discourse with the animal below. But for the most part the windows of the great barracks were unoccupied, and the place looked deserted and desolate in the extreme.

Richard walked on, thinking of what he was not long before, and of his present position through one turn of fortune's wheel. What was to happen next, now that he had been disappointed and his project had come to naught?

Right on before him there was another gateway, across which, in the soft summer evening light, a second sentry in white flannel jacket pa.s.sed, with the light gleaming upon his triangular bayonet.

One moment he thought of turning back; the next he had rejected this, and advanced. He had taken his course, and he must go on.

The second sentry looked harder at him as he pa.s.sed an open doorway from out of which came a puff of hot bad tobacco smoke; but the man seemed to pay no further heed as he went on and now found himself at what was evidently the front of the barracks, and directly afterward a burst of music fell upon his ears.

It sounded very welcome, and, walking in the direction, he pa.s.sed a couple of large open windows, from whence came the clatter of silver upon china and the buzz of voices accompanied by sundry odours of an agreeable nature, which reminded him of the fact that he had eaten nothing since his hurried breakfast.

"The mess-room," he said to himself.

The officers were dining; and the band was playing selections during that function.

Richard pa.s.sed on, thinking, and with his spirits going down like the mercury in a weather-gla.s.s before a storm.

In a short time he, in all probability, would have been an officer attached to some regiment, while now he was a fugitive and a vagabond on the face of the earth.

"Not even fit to be a private," he said to himself; and then, attracted by the music, he turned and walked back, to stop between the two windows, listening, and with the smell of the dinner making him forget his troubles in baser thoughts as his mouth began to water.

Then the c.h.i.n.k of gla.s.ses began to mingle with the buzz of voices.

"Taking wine," muttered the listener; and he wondered whether it was Hock.

_Pop_!

"Champagne or Moselle," he muttered; and the report of a second cork taking flight from the bottle followed, and then a third, while the music went on.

There was a row of iron railings in front of the windows, and Richard turned his back and rested it against them; for he was tired, and it was pleasant to listen to the music and feel himself close to a party of gentlemen just for a few minutes before he went back into the town to find out some place where he could get a meal and bed.

All at once, after a loud pa.s.sage, the band wound up with a series of chords, leaving the princ.i.p.al flute-player sustaining one long note and then dropping to the octave below, from which he started upon a series of runs, paused, and commenced a solo full of florid pa.s.sages introductory to a delicious melody--one of those plaintive airs which, once heard, cling evermore to the memory.

d.i.c.k was weary, faint, and in low spirits. The events of the past days seemed to fit themselves to the strain, till his brow wrinkled up, then grew full of knots, and he angrily muttered the word "m.u.f.f!" A few moments later he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed "Duffer!" and then twisted himself suddenly round to look up at the open window from which, mingled with the loud conversation and rattle of plates, the music came.

"Oh, it's murder!" muttered the lad. "The fellow ought to be kicked!"

and, as he listened, his hand went involuntarily into his breast-pocket, pressed the b.u.t.ton in the side of the morocco flute-case, and extracted the little silver-keyed piccolo from where it reposed in purple velvet beside the two pieces of his flute.

And all the while the solo was continued, the player slurring over pa.s.sages, omitting a whole bar, and seeming to be increasing his pace so as to take the final roulades at a break-neck gallop, and get through, somehow, without further accident.

But he did not; for, as he reached the beginning of a brilliant arpeggio, at the top of which there was a trill and a leap down of an octave and a half, the wind in the bellows of this human organ suddenly gave out, a few wildly chaotic notes elicited a roar of laughter from the table accompanied by derisive applause. This stopped as if by magic; for, suddenly, from out there by the railing, a few long thrilling shakes were heard, deliciously sweet and pure, followed by the arpeggio. The effect was as if liquid music was falling from the summer sky; and then the player ran back to the earlier part of the air, and, amidst perfect silence from within, on and on it ran, thrilling its hearers with appealing, impa.s.sioned tones, breathed by one who had forgotten where he was--everything but the fact that the glorious theme he loved had been cruelly murdered, and that he was bringing it back to life; for it was one of his favourite airs.

In the utter silence a window was softly opened somewhere higher up, then another and another, towards which the liquid, bird-like notes rose in plaintive, long-drawn appeals, to come trickling down again in runs-- rising, falling, rising, falling, with a purity and strength which seemed impossible as coming from that tiny instrument. Finally this softened, grew lower and lower, till the last notes regularly died away in the distance. And then, and then only, in the midst of a roar of applause, d.i.c.k stood, piccolo in hand, as if he had been just woke up from a musical dream by a flannel-jacketed private, bearing a drawn bayonet, who said, savagely--

"Come out! You've no business here!"

"No, no, sentry; leave him alone!" said a loud voice; and Richard looked up, to see that the windows were full of officers, whose scarlet mess-vests, with their rows of tiny b.u.t.tons, shone in the evening light.

Higher up there were ladies looking down; and then the musician glanced sharply round and began to thrust his piccolo back into his breast-pocket.

"Hold hard, there!" cried the same voice, and Richard looked quickly up, to meet the dark eyes of a big, handsome, youngish man, who, napkin in hand, towered above the others, but turned sharply round, and Richard heard him say--

"May we have him in, sir?"

"Oh, yes!" came back in a quick, commanding voice, and the officer looked out again.

"Here!" he cried, "we want you to come in and play."

"I--I beg your pardon--I--I--"

d.i.c.k got no further, for an officer's servant was at his elbow, looking at him rather superciliously as he said--

"This way!"

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

"YOU MEANT IT, THEN?"

For one moment Richard flinched, and thought of making a run for it; the next he was following the man.

"Why not?" he muttered. "I may as well, if they want me to. Why not play for my living now?"

The next minute, with the feeling of shrinking gone, he was standing in the mess-room, in one corner of which, partially hidden by a screen and some palms, was the band, while close to him, leaning back in his chair, was a fine, florid-looking, grey officer, evidently the colonel or major of the regiment, while the rest of the officers had resumed their places, and the dinner was going on.