The Drummer's Coat.

by J. W. Fortescue.

PREFATORY NOTE

Lest a princ.i.p.al incident in this little tale should seem incredible, it may be mentioned that an instance of a child being deprived of speech for several days, at the bidding of a reputed witch, came under the author's immediate notice less than three years ago, in a village but three miles distant from his own home.

It may be added that the military details in Chapter XIII. are all drawn from authentic sources, mainly from the _Recollections of Rifleman Harris_ and the _History of the Fifty-Second Regiment_.

CASTLE HILL,

28th August, 1899.

THE DRUMMER'S COAT

CHAPTER I

In a deep wooded valley in the north of Devon stands the village of Ashacombe. It is but a little village, of some twenty or thirty cottages with white cob walls and low thatched roofs, running along the sunny side of the valley for a little way, and then curving downward across it to a little bridge of two tiny pointed arches, on the other side of which stands a mill with a water-wheel. For a little stream runs down this valley as down all Devonshire valleys; and as you look up the water from the bridge you can see it winding and sparkling through its margin of meadow, while the great oak woods hang still and solemn above it, till some bold green headland slopes down and shuts it from your sight; and you raise your eyes, and count fresh headlands crossing each other right and left beyond it, fainter and fainter, till at last they end in a little patch of purple heather, which seems to be the end of all things.

But when you look down the water, you find that the woods no longer cover the sunny side of the valley so thickly, but that there is open ground like a park. There is a gate by the bridge opening on to a narrow road, which presently ends in two great spreading yews; and through these you can see a lych-gate, and beyond it a little grey church with a low grey tower. Close to this gate is a lodge of grey stone, with a winding drive which guides your eye through the trees to the gables of a house of the same grey stone, which peer up over the trees on the ground above the church. Then beyond it the headlands of green wood begin to cross each other again, lower and lower, till you can follow them no more.

So Ashacombe, as may easily be guessed, is a sleepy little village, which sees little of the great world outside. But whatever it sees it can see well, for the hill on which it stands is so much broken by little clefts and hollows that some of the cottages stand level with the road and some high above it; wherefore if you are not satisfied with looking at anything on the road from the same level, you can go to some neighbour's garden and gaze down upon it from above, or again you can slip down from the road into the meadow (for the road is raised on a wall) and scrutinise it carefully from below. Still sleepy though the village may be, it is always beautifully neat and clean. The walls are always of spotless white, and the thatch trim and in good repair.

The sc.r.a.p of garden behind each cottage is well tended and full of vegetables, and the sc.r.a.p of garden in front gay with flowers; for Ashacombe has never known the time when there was not a master or mistress in the Hall who made the village their first care. Such it is now, and such, if old pictures are to be trusted, it was with little difference eighty years ago, at which time we are about to examine its history.

But if visitors come to Ashacombe it is to see not the village but the Hall, for Bracefort Hall has some fame of its own. It is a beautiful little house, built in the time of King Henry the Sixth, and therefore in the shape of an H, with two gables marking the end of the downstrokes, and a short length of grey roof standing for the cross-bar. It faces to the south, so that the little court between the gables is a veritable sun-trap, wherein grow magnolia and jessamine; while roses, Dutch honeysuckle, clematis and wistaria cover the whole front of the house and almost hide the mullioned windows. But the Hall is even more attractive within than without, for from the moment when you enter the door you find yourself among oak panels, oak carving and old tapestry on every side and in every room. The house has but two storeys, so that the rooms are not very large not very high, with the exception of the hall, which fills both storeys of the cross-bar of the H, from the floor to the roof. The ceiling is of open work, beautifully carved; the walls are panelled high, and at the head of each panel is painted a coat of arms showing the marriages of many generations of Braceforts. Above the panels at one end of the hall are huge coats of arms carved in stone and gorgeously coloured; and at the other end is a gallery of carved oak with the gilded pipes of an organ shining above it. A great part of the outer wall is taken up by a very large mullioned window with quaint round panes, many of them filled with old stained gla.s.s; and on the wall opposite to it is a great fireplace of carved stone, the centre of it showing the crest of a mailed arm and the motto, Dieu et bras fort.

Above this fireplace hang some curious things--stags' horns, and weapons of bygone times, and among them a buff coat, an iron helmet, a cuira.s.s, and two long straight swords, which evidently belonged to one of the gentlemen with flowing love-locks and broad collars turned down over their mail, whose portraits are hung on each side. But below these is a more modern helmet, such a helmet as was worn by Light Dragoons about a century ago, of lacquered leather with a huge comb of fur, a scarlet turban wound about it, and a short plume of red and white. Also there is a curved sword with a crimson sash draped round it; and below these again, neatly spread in a gla.s.s case, is a quaint little child's coat of yellow, with red collar, cuffs and lapels, two tiny red wings at the shoulders and two tiny red tails behind; which garment an inscription, now much faded, declares to be a drummer's coat of the time of the Peninsular War.

Now it is easy to guess to whom the Light Dragoon's helmet and sword and sash belonged, for immediately on one side of it is a portrait of a very handsome man with dark hair and eyes, dressed in a blue coat with silver braid, with the crimson sash round his waist, the curved sword at his side, and the identical helmet under his arm; and you may read underneath the picture that it represents Captain Richard Bracefort, who was killed at the battle of Salamanca. Close by, too, is a picture of his charger, Billy Pitt, which he rode in the battle, and which lived, as is written on the picture, for many years afterwards. Again, as a pendant to the Captain's picture hangs a portrait of a lady, showing a beautiful oval face with three chestnut curls on each side of it and a ma.s.s of chestnut hair above, and two blue eyes as clear and as pure as a child's; and underneath this portrait is written the name of Lady Eleanor Bracefort, wife and widow of Captain Richard the Light Dragoon.

But how the drummer's coat ever found its way into Bracefort Hall there is nothing to show. Nevertheless by that little coat there hangs a tale; and though that tale is now nearly eighty years old, both the Hall and the village are so little changed that it is perhaps worth the telling.

CHAPTER II

It was the 22nd of July 1820, and the shadows were beginning to lengthen over Ashacombe village on a burning summer's afternoon. The men were still at work, and most of the women also; for, early though it was, a farmer was cutting a field of wheat over the hill on the far side of the valley, a field which was always the first in the whole parish to ripen. So the men were cutting and the women were binding, for women did more work in the fields in those days than in these; and now and again, when the booming of the mill-wheel ceased for a moment, the sound of the hones on the sickles could be heard clinking musically in the still heavy air. Two or three old women alone stood in their porches, with their sun-bonnets over their neat white caps, gossiping as they knitted, and speaking an occasional word to an old, old man who sat in a high-backed chair basking in the sun. The children were all down in the meadow below, the little maids mostly sitting in the shade and making nosegays of forget-me-nots; while every boy that could walk, and some of the maids also, were paddling in the little stream or dancing about the bank in chase of such unhappy fish as had been too lazy to leave the shallows when the stream was turned into the mill-leat. Sometimes they were silent, and the next moment they broke into chorus like a pack of hounds, while occasionally there came a shrill rate from one of the old women who watched them from the cottages, calling back some too venturesome boy from the deep water of the mill-leat.

So the old women gossiped and the children played, for the daily coaches up and down had pa.s.sed some hours before, and there was little excitement to be looked for in the road after they were gone.

Presently the old women stopped and listened, for they heard the gate at the lodge clang as it opened and shut, and two children's voices crying merrily, "Oh, corporal, corporal, put on your watering-cap!"

Then one of the old women hastened, though with infirm steps, across her little garden towards the road, and stood by the edge of it among tall stalks of red valerian and a great plant of periwinkle which hung down over the wall. And there came along the road a tall man with grizzled hair, dressed in drab breeches and gaiters just like any other man, but wearing on his head a flat blue cap, widening out from brim to crown, with a yellow band round the forehead--the watering cap of a Light Dragoon. He walked very erect, though he limped slightly with one leg; and over one shoulder he carried a clean white stable-rubber, neatly folded, with a stable-halter tied across it. Hanging on to his hand on one side was a little boy of about nine years old with great brown eyes and glossy black hair, dressed in a very short little brown jacket with brown breeches b.u.t.toning on to it, and a broad white collar. On the Corporal's other side and clinging tight to his other hand skipped a little girl with wide blue eyes and fair hair, dressed all in white, and with her face almost hidden under a little white sun-bonnet. Both children carried a little wreath of laurel in their hands and seemed to have some very important business before them, until they caught sight of the old woman looking down upon them, when they cried out "Sally! Sally!" and letting go the Corporal's hand ran up the steep little steps to her, while the Corporal limped more slowly after them.

"Ah, my dear hearts," said old Sally, "I minded that it was Sallymanky day, and I said to myself that Master d.i.c.k and Miss Elsie would surely be coming in for the ribbins. Shall us go in to house and fetch mun?

Then please to come in. Please to come right in, Mr. Brimacott," she added, addressing the Corporal. So they pa.s.sed through the little low door into the cottage, and in two seconds the children were standing on chairs and examining all the treasures on the walls. For Sally had been a servant at Bracefort Hall, and was never so glad as when little d.i.c.k and Elsie Bracefort came to pay her a visit; first because she thought there was no family to equal the Braceforts in the whole wide world, and secondly, because these children had lost their father at Salamanca just eight years before to a day. And there were wonderful things on the walls, too. First and foremost there were two coloured pictures, one of France and Britannia joining hands, with a very woolly lamb and a very singular lion lying down together at their feet; and the other of Commerce and Plenty, represented as two very slender ladies with very short waists, loading Britannia with corn and fruit and flowers of the brightest colours. The children had heard Sally tell the story of them fifty times but were quite content to hear it again--how Sally had bought them of a hawker in the year 1802, for joy that peace was come at last, and how that wicked Boney had plunged all the world into war again. Then d.i.c.k jumped up and brought down a china figure of a man in a blue coat on a prancing horse with his hand pointing upwards, who was no other than Boney, the terrible Bonaparte himself, as he appeared when crossing the Alps.

"Ah, the roog," said Sally, as d.i.c.k flourished the figure. "Many's the time that I've wanted to throw he behind the fire. He tooked from me my boy, my Jan; ah, you knows the story of my Jan, don't 'ee, my dear?"

she added turning to Elsie.

"Yes," said Elsie, who had heard the story so often as a mite of a child that she told it herself with something of a Devonshire accent, "poor Jan that 'listed for a soldier and went to Portingale to the wars, and never come back, not he, nor wild Lucy that ran away for the love of him, nor the boy that was born to them."

"Aye," said the old woman to the Corporal, but smiling sadly on the child. "Killed he was, so they said, but they couldn't tell how nor where; and missing they was, but I never could find out nought about mun, though I hope still to hear somewhat; but it must come soon for it's ten years agone now, and I reckon that my time's a getting short."

The Corporal nodded; but d.i.c.k had brought down another figure in china, the figure of a man in a red coat with a hooked nose and two curves of black whisker on his cheeks, underneath which was written WELLINGTON.

"Aye," said old Sally, triumphantly, "that was the boy to give Boney what vor. And now here's the wreaths, my dears, tied with the family colours, blue and white. I've a had they ribbins forty years, ever since the great election, when Bracefort was head of the poll, your grandfather that was. And now you'm going to catch the old Billy Pitt, I reckon; dear, dear, to think that the horse should still be here and the captain gone."

"But the Lieutenant's come back," said the Corporal. "Colonel Fitzdenys, I should say, whom I mind as the captain's lieutenant; come back only yesterday safe and sound from the Injies."

"That's well," said Sally, "for a fine brave gentleman he is, as never pa.s.ses me without a kind word. But don't 'ee go yet for a minute, my dears," and she hobbled away to a large gla.s.s bottle, took out two sticks of toffee, such as she sold to the village boys for a halfpenny a piece, and gave them to d.i.c.k and Elsie.

The children took them gratefully, for it was little sweet stuff that children got in those days; and old Sally watched them as they went up the road, each of them breaking off a large piece for the Corporal.

They had not long been gone when a new and strange figure suddenly bounded into the road from the bank at the side. It was that of a young man who seemed to be about five and twenty, short in stature and slight in figure, and dressed in a long skirted coat, breeches and gaiters, which were all alike full of rents and patches. He wore no hat, but his head was so thickly covered by a shock of brown hair that he did not seem to want one. His face was brown and sunburnt and partly covered by a fair downy beard, which, though not thick, added to his wild and untidy appearance; and his eyes were very large, grey and vacant. He sprang down from the bank as though he had lived there all his life, like a rabbit, and then moved on towards the village at a strange shambling pace, straying from side to side of the road and waving his arms meaninglessly. Suddenly he stopped, and pulling a squirrel out of his pocket began to play with it, cooing and whistling to it as it ran over his arms, and chirping when it stopped and threw its tail over its back. The two seemed to be the very best of friends, and after playing for some time the man moved on with the squirrel on his shoulder, drawing closer to the village; when of a sudden the boys at play in the stream broke into such a storm of yells that he jumped up on the bank again to look at them, and stood there for a time gaping and grinning from ear to ear at what he saw.

For the boys had succeeded in driving a little eel into a corner and in throwing it ash.o.r.e; and there they were, dancing about like mad creatures, unable to hold it, more than half afraid to touch it, but always contriving to twitch the wretched wriggling thing further from the water. One brave little maid managed for a moment to catch it in her pinafore but dropped it instantly, as all the boys screamed: "Put it down! he'll bite 'ee." And so they went on babbling their loudest, when the ragged man in the road suddenly put the squirrel into his pocket and ran down into the meadow, laughing louder than the loudest, to take part in the fun. In spite of his long-skirted coat he was as active as any of them, now clutching desperately at the eel with his hand, now running at full speed for a few yards and then plunging down on his knees, and all the while laughing and whinnying with a noise more like that of a horse than of a man. The boys, though at first a little startled at the appearance of such a figure in their midst, soon screamed louder than ever with laughter at his strange antics; until at last the ragged man got the eel fairly clamped between his fingers and ran away with it, the whole of the children following him in full cry.

He had almost reached the road when his foot slipped and down he fell violently on his face. The squirrel, scared to death, ran out of his coat-pocket, and the eel slipped through his fingers into the long gra.s.s by the ditch and was seen no more.

The man got up looking dazed and foolish, with his hair full of forget-me-nots, into which he had plunged in his fall. The children gathered round him hooting and screaming; and he stared at them grinning vacantly without a word. From shouts the boys soon went on to taunts of "Shockhead! Shockhead!" but still the ragged man stood and grinned, until at last two of them caught sight of the squirrel and began to hunt it about the field. Then the man's whole demeanour changed in an instant; and charging down upon the boys he gave them a push which laid both of them flat on the ground, while the squirrel ran hastily up his leg and nestled in terror against his cheek. Then he began to look, with the air of a hunted beast, for some means of escape. The two boys got up whimpering, more frightened than hurt, and at the sight of their tears the merriment of the rest turned instantly to anger. The boys remembered suddenly that their eel was gone, and crowded round the man, yelling continuously, "Where's our ale? Where's our ale? You've stole our ale." And the ragged man with drooping shoulders and white scared face slunk along the fence under the road, looking for a weak place by which he might scramble out of the field.

At last he found one and made a bound to climb up it; but the bank was too steep and he fell back. The boys seeing that he was afraid of them began to raise the cry of thief, or, as they called it, thafe. Half a dozen of them ran round to the gate of the meadow to cut him off, while the rest yelled round him like a pack of baying hounds, with cries of "Thafe! Thafe! Thafe!" The man made a second attempt to climb up the bank, and this time reached the top, where he lay for a few moments sprawling, amid the jeers of his tormentors; and Tommy Fry, who was the scapegrace of the village, picked up a clod of earth and threw it at him. The clod, which was full of little stones, struck him full on the cheek and drew blood. The man gave a little whine of pain, and struggled quickly to his feet; but the boys were in the road before him, and, worse than that, the women hearing the cry of thief were hastening to the spot; for they thought of clean clothes that might be drying on their garden hedges, and, if there be a creature which villagers dread and detest, it is a tramp. The man looked fearfully up and down the road, and saw that it was blocked on every side by hurrying women and children; and then sinking down by the roadside he buried his face in his hands and blubbered aloud, while the squirrel, fully as frightened as he was, nestled close to his bleeding cheek.

Then there was a babel of voices, scolding, complaining and accusing, but the man sat blubbering and took no heed. Two or three children were ready to start to fetch the men from the harvest-field, and one old crone was declaiming with great eloquence on the iniquity of tramps, when a strange woman suddenly forced her way through the crowd to the sobbing man and took him by the arm. Her sun-bonnet was so tied before her face that they could see little of it but two eyes, which gleamed black and keen like the eyes of a hawk. She raised the man gently to his feet, and then turned round fiercely upon the ring of women and children about her.

"Now," she said imperiously, "cease your bawling, and let mun go. The poor soul a'nt done no harm to you, I'll warrant mun. Let mun go, and shame upon 'ee."

The man rose to his feet still blubbering, and the squirrel moved back from his face. Then she saw the blood on his cheek, and her eyes glowed like fire as she said in a voice that trembled with rage:

"Who's been a drowing stones at my boy?"

"He stole our ale," shouted Tommy Fry boldly, and the rest of the children took up the chorus--"He stole our ale!" And Tommy Fry ended the cry with the word, "Thafe."

The strange woman turned upon him instantly. "_You_ drowed the stone,"

she said, quivering with rage. "_You_ dare to call mun thafe. You don't spake again till I tell 'ee--mind that. I'll tache 'ee to call my boy names." And Tommy Fry shrank back with staring eyes, appalled at her fury, while she put her arm again tighter round that of the ragged man and began to lead him away.

"No, no, no," broke in a village woman who came up breathless at this moment: "You'm too fast by half. 'Tis the like of he that we want to catch, taking our linen off the hedges. I lost some but two months agone, and I'll be bound 'twas he that did it. What was it was taked away, Mary?" she asked, turning to one of the little girls. "Two pair of stockings and a chimase or one pair of stockings and two chimases?

No, no, no; run, my dear, and fetch father home quick. No, stop! Here comes Mr. Brimacott."

And as she spoke there was a sound of hoofs and the Corporal appeared leading a brown horse with a little wreath of laurel hung round his ears and the white rubber spread over his back, on which were seated d.i.c.k and Elsie, d.i.c.k riding in front brandishing his toffee, while Elsie with her arm round his waist sat quietly behind him.

"What's all this?" said the Corporal, as the horse p.r.i.c.ked up his ears over the hubbub before him; and without waiting for a moment he lifted the two children to the ground. Then all the women came clamouring round him with their complaints; and the Corporal frowned, for he loved a tramp as little as any of them.

"'Tain't true," said the strange woman firmly, "'tain't true. He's but a poor harmless lad. Sarch mun, if you will, maister; ye won't find nought."

The Corporal eyed the ragged man keenly. "He looks to be a half-baked body," he said as if to himself.