VC -- A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea.

by David Christie Murray.

CHAPTER I

The people of Castle Barfield boast that the middle of their High Street is on a level with the cross of St. Paul's Cathedral. The whole country-side is open, and affords a welcome to storm from whatever corner of the compa.s.s it may blow. You have to get right away into the Peak district before you can find anything like an eminence of distinction, though the mild slopes of Quarry-moor and Cline, a few miles to the westward, save the prospect from complete monotony. East, and a trifle to the north, rises Beacon Hargate, on the top whereof one of the innumerable bonfires which warned England of the coming of the Armada hung out its flaming banner in the sight of three counties.

Topping that high tableland, Beacon Hargate is familiar with wild weather at the proper seasons, and by dint of use takes very little notice of it. But on the evening on which this story has its proper beginning such a storm raged round and over the old Beacon as no man or woman of that region could even remember. It began in the grey of the dawn in wild and fitful gusts, driving thick squalls of rain before them, but long before midday it lost its first waywardness and settled down to business with a steady purpose. It grew in force from hour to hour, and almost from minute to minute, until all living things sought shelter. The disconsolate cattle huddled under the spa.r.s.e hedgerows, looking down their broad, dripping noses in a meek abandonment to fate.

The sheep packed themselves in any hollowed corner they could find, and hugged their soaked fleeces close to each other in uncomplaining patience. The trees fought the blast with impotent arms, and shrieked and groaned their protest against it Flying boughs, like great grotesque birds, went hurtling through the air.

As the brief March day fell towards its close, the storm seemed suddenly to double in fury. Oak and elm went down before it bodily, torn from the stout anchorage of many years, and before the wind had raged itself to rest many scores of patriarchal landmarks were laid low. Roar of tormented woods, howl of wind, crash on crash of breaking boughs or falling trees, blended to one tune, and a plunging rain came down in ropes rather than in lines, driven at a fierce angle.

Night fell, and the pitiless tempest raged on, but with the coming of the darkness one sign of cheer displayed itself. From the windows of the plain old grey-stone mansion on the eastern side of the Beacon Hill lights began to glow, first in this chamber and then in that, until the whole squat edifice seemed charged with warmth and comfort. The tempest poured its full strength against the grey-stone house. It shook the windows with its frantic hand, it shrieked and howled and roared amongst the chimney tops and gables, it strained the hasps of the staunch oaken doors, and the old house faced it with a broadening smile, and shone the brighter by contrast as the night grew blacker.

In the whole roaring region there was but one man to be found abroad, and he was making for the grey-stone house. He was a portly person with a prosperous-looking development about the neighbourhood of the lower waistcoat, and he was sorely tried, though he was as yet on the sheltered side of the hill. His heavy black broadcloth was soaked through and through, and weighed him down. The icy wet had chilled him, and he breathed hard at every laboured step. One stiff slope of some fifty yards had still to be surmounted before he reached the hill-top.

Twenty yards further lay the house, with all windows beaming. It was as yet invisible to him, but in his mind's eye he could see it, and the thought of it gave him courage. He turned his back to the plunging rain, and paused to gather breath before he a.s.saulted the last slope of the hill. He had lost his hat, and the water trickled out of his hair in rivulets.

'I've seen worse weather than any they can brew in the neighbourhood of Beacon Hargate,' he panted to himself, 'but it's one thing to have a good tight craft under your feet, and it's another to be bogged in the dark, over half a mile of rotten plough-land. All right, my lads, you haven't got Jack Jervase under yet. Here goes.'

With this he faced the hill and the rain again, and made his difficult and slippery way upward, impeded by his clinging clothes, and snorting like a grampus. Right at the crown of the hill, most fortunately for the wayfarer, there was a thick coppice of stunted trees, which afforded refuge from the gale and shelter from the rain. He was quite blown by the time he reached it, and he clutched at the nearest sapling as a drowning man clutches at a spar. He stood there perforce for a full minute, panting hard. Then he shook his head doggedly, and muttered a second time:

'All right, my lads. You haven't got Jack Jervase yet.'

And then, helping himself along from hand to hand, he skirted the coppice, until he came to the unsheltered brow of the hill. It was well for him then that he had something to hold on by. Even as it was, he was clean lifted from his feet, and it was only by a prodigious effort that he saved himself from being blown away like a leaf. But having once struggled past the actual summit, he had escaped that danger, and a minute later, through howling-wind and scourging rain, the fire-lit windows of the house were beaming 'home!' upon him. Another instant and his feet were on the firm gravel, and he went scudding before the wind until he had gained the corner of the house. Here, feeling his troubles over, he paused once more for breath, and took a dripping way towards the rear of the building.

He stayed for an instant to glance in at an old-fashioned broad mullioned window. He looked into a room where a jolly coal fire was burning in the grate, and blazing up the chimney. About it half-a-dozen people sat comfortably grouped, and there was a big brown steaming jug upon the wooden table in the centre of the room, which was paved with the large square tiles locally called 'quarries.' One of the group about the fire turned to this jug and poured out from it a generous-looking stream of dark brown liquid into a number of mugs of the old Staffordshire ware, which at that time of day was common in rustic households, though it seems now to have vanished from all places but the shelves of the collector. The onlooker shivered and spoke under his breath.

'You're making pretty free with old Jack's old October inside there, ain't you? Pretty fine old crowd to come home to!--guzzling at my expense. I'll sort ye.'

A moment later he was in the room, but short as the interval was between the close of his speech and his appearance before the group about the fire, his temper had apparently changed, for he broke out in a cheery voice:

'Hilloa, my lads! I reckon one or two of you are weatherbound. Well, you've found a snug harbour here, and you're welcome to it. Mary,' he went on, addressing a thick-set woman of middle age, who had risen at his entrance, and stood before him with an embarra.s.sed aspect, 'don't tell the missus that I'm at home, but go upstairs and lay out dry things for me. I'm wet through to the marrow. I'll have a drop of that myself,'

he said, laying a hand on one of the mugs and nodding round the little circle, with a beaming face.

One of the men noisily shifted his chair to make room for him, and the master of the house approached the fire, and, turning his back to it, began to steam like a whole washing day.

He sipped comfortably at the creaming contents of the mug, and fairly beamed upon his guests.

'You chaps,' he said, 'will have to wake up by and by. I hope there isn't one of you that hasn't got the spirit to go out and fight for his Queen and country?'

'There ain't a-going to be no fightin', Mr. Jervase,' said one of the men sheepishly.

'Don't you make any mistake about that, my lad,' said Mr. Jervase. 'I've got a bit of news for you as will set old England in a blaze within another four-and-twenty hours. And I suppose I'm the only man within five miles that knows it. You mark my words, now, all of you. You'll remember this night to the last day o' your lives. This is the 27th March, this is. The twenty-seventh of March in the year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty-four. That's a date as will stick in your gizzards, my hearties. It's a date as will stick in old England's gizzard, and in the Czar of Rooshia's gizzard, and in the gizzard of Napoleon Three. And you can lay your oath to that, because Jack Jervase told you.'

'Why, what's happened, Mr. Jervase?' asked the man who had spoken earlier.

'Happened?' cried Mr. Jervase. 'Why, Her Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria has sent a message to her Royal 'Ouses of Parliament to say as she's declared war agen the Czar of all the Rooshias. And before a month is over your heads, my lads, there'll be war amongst the Great Powers of Europe, for the first time in eight-and-thirty years.'

The five men rose to their feet unconsciously in their excitement.

They were mere country-side clods, and knew as little of the rights and wrongs of that great Eastern question which had overshadowed the world so long, as the horses they drove about the heavy country lanes or the flocks they herded. But they broke into a cheer.

The bringer of the news lifted a hand, and waved them into silence.

'You'll have the missus in to know what all that hullaballoo's about,'

he said, reprovingly: 'and I don't want to be bothered until I've made a change. Now I'll tell you what it is, my lads. The Queen wants men, and there isn't one of you that isn't fit to go a-soldiering. I just tell you this--if any one of you, or the whole lot of you, see fit to take the Queen's shilling I'll put a pound to it for bounty money. Now, you needn't cheer again,' he added hastily.

As a matter of fact, none of his listeners showed any inclination to cheer. War in the abstract was a thing to cheer about, but war in the concrete--war with its possibilities--thus brought home to each individual mind excited no enthusiasm.

'You think about that, my lads,' said the host, distributing a series of smiling nods about him. 'Old Jack Jervase's day is over, or he'd be at it again, and so I tell you. It's many and many a year now since I heard a shot fired in anger, or since I stood on a ship's deck. But I've got the heart for the work still, if I haven't got the figger. Heigh-ho,' he went on, with a regretful moan, 'there's no room for a pottle-bellied, bald-headed old coot like me atween the decks of a man o' war. But if I was five-and-twenty years younger, why, G.o.d bless my soul, I shouldn't hesitate a minute!'

The woman he had despatched immediately upon his entrance returned at this instant and coughed behind her hand to indicate her presence.

'All ready, Mary?' said Mr. Jervase in a ringing and cheery voice.

'That's well. Don't forget what I've told you, lads: fine young chaps like you ought not to desert their Queen and country in the hour of need. I'll keep my promise. Any one of you as takes the sergeant's shilling can claim a pound for bounty money from old Jack Jervase.'

So saying, he rolled, with a nautical gait, towards the door by which the domestic had re-entered the room, and having reached the stairfoot, and finding himself alone, he added, with a sudden snarl, 'I'd like to give three of ye a chance of earning a wooden leg anyhow--coming into my house and guzzling my best beer the very minute my back's turned on ye.'

He found a cheerful fire blazing in his own room, and dry clothing laid out before it. He began to undress, casting his coat into one corner of the room, with a gesture of exasperation, and his waistcoat into another. He tugged at his bootlaces angrily, muttering to himself meanwhile mere sc.r.a.ps of speech in which the words 'beer,' and 'waste,'

and 'guzzling beasts,' were audible. When he had stripped completely, he gave himself a l.u.s.ty towelling from head to foot, and then struggled into the warm, dry raiment prepared for him. As at the completion of his toilet he stood with a pair of stiff military brushes working at his hair and whiskers, before a big cheval gla.s.s, he looked eminently British for his day. The style is a little changing now, but the thick-set st.u.r.dy figure, the full paunch, the blunt scowling features, the cold grey eyes, the double chin, the firm yet sensual mouth, were all expressive of his type. The suit of pilot cloth into which he had changed gave him something of a seafaring look; but the high white collar, the shining black satin stock, the heavy gold chain which trailed across his waistcoat, and the clean-trimmed hirsute mutton-chop on either side the heavy jowl combined to make him intensely respectable to look at. He thrust his feet into a pair of wool-lined slippers, which he had left toasting till the last moment before the fire, and took his way downstairs, and along the pa.s.sage which traversed the whole side of the house. His face was drawn into a heavy frown as he thrust open the door he came to, and he entered the room with a cough of magisterial importance. A tall, gaunt man, with stooping shoulders, rose to meet him, and the expression of Mr. Jervase's face changed as if by magic.

Something of such a change had taken place between his looking in on the rustics a.s.sembled round his kitchen fire and his appearance amongst them. But now it was even swifter, and more p.r.o.nounced.

'Why, General Boswell!' he cried. 'This is indeed an unexpected honour.

I'm proud to see you, sir, beneath my 'umble roof. Jack Jervase wasn't a very distinguished servant of Her Majesty. He never held the Queen's commission, sir; but he fowt beneath his country's flag, and he'll always feel it an honour to welcome a superior officer of the sister arm.'

He said this with a laugh, and a roll of the head, as if to carry off by his own geniality any sense of presumption which might appear to lurk within his speech, and he bent low over the hand which was proffered to him.

The visitor's type was as p.r.o.nouncedly English as John Jervase's own, and yet it could hardly have differed further from it if the two men had been inhabitants of planets strange to one another. John Jervase was British _bourgeois_ from head to foot, and the General from crown to sole was an aristocrat. His very figure told the observer that, and the manly aquiline features and the mild, yet searching blue eye had never left an instant's doubt about it in the mind of any man. He was some six feet four in stature, and the slight stoop which sat upon his shoulders looked somehow as if it had been brought about by the innate courtesy of a man who could not refrain from bending to people of inferior stature.

It scarcely detracted from the military character of his carriage, and, indeed, the General could stand up straight enough when he chose, as divers of the old incorrigibles who had been under his command in many climates knew full well. It was always a bad sign to one of these when he saw the General square his shoulders: and if, in addition to this, both hands were sent at the same time to twist the ends of the great drooping grey moustache, the old offender knew that his plight was serious indeed. Yet, for a grizzled old campaigner, who was now growing nigh to three score years, the General was marvellously mild and sweet in manner. His features, to be sure, were high, and in some of their signs a little harsh; but his mouth was very gentle in expression, and the large yet deepset eyes beamed with a kind simplicity. It was a common saying in his fighting days that Boswell's men would have followed him into h.e.l.l. But children trusted and loved him at sight; and it was a pretty picture sometimes in his social hours to see him as the centre of a bevy of young girls--over whom he always seemed to exercise a perfectly unconscious fascination.

'You've been to town, Jervase, I understand,' said the General, 'What's the news there?'

'The news, sir,' said Mr. Jervase. 'The news, sir, has come at last, and by this time I suppose Her Majesty's forces have got their marching orders.'

'Do you mean it's war, Jervase?' cried the General.

'I mean it's war, sir,' Jervase answered. 'The latest news, before I came away, was that the Queen had sent a message to Parliament that negotiations with the Czar are broken off. The message goes on to say that Her Majesty relies upon her faithful subjects to protect the Sultan against the encroachments of Russia.'

His manners and his accent were alike more dignified than they had been when he addressed the rustic crowd. It could be seen that he had one manner for the kitchen and another for the parlour.

'At last!' said the General, half under his breath. 'At last! Well, everybody has seen it coming, and there----' he went on, turning upon his heel and speaking in a raised voice, 'there is your chance, Polson.

You're a lucky dog, not even to have your commission from your agent's hands, and yet to be on the edge of the biggest campaign since Waterloo.'

A lad of three-and-twenty had risen from a seat in the corner of the room at the moment of John Jervase's entry. He had risen so hastily that he had overturned half a set of chessmen from the board on which he had been playing, into the lap of a pretty girl, his partner in the game; but he had listened so intently, from the General's first question, that he was unconscious of that slight mishap. He walked into the broader light which shone beneath the central lamp, and asked eagerly:

'There's no mistake about that, Dad? There's no mistake about it?'

The speaker was Jervase's son, as a stranger seeing them under the same roof would have been ready to swear at sight. He was taller than his father by a good four inches; and the family resemblance, striking as it was, did not pierce so deep as the expression of the face. The father's blunt features were softened in the boy's, and though the look of energy was there, it was altogether lifted and spiritualised--possibly, perhaps, by the intense feeling of the moment.

'And there'll be no mistake about my commission?' the young man asked.