Early morning brought sobriety, with a headache, a burning thirst, and deep reflection.
I had enlisted as a private dragoon: I, the heir to a baronetcy; but it was a baronetcy that would not bring with it an acre of land, and by the enmity of its present possessors, I was then on the verge of total want. What other path was open to me than this, which it seemed as if the hand of destiny now indicated?
"Yes—yes," thought I, "it is the dictum of fate!"
My position had been one of extreme difficulty. I could not dig, and to beg—even from Sir Basil—I was ashamed; besides, I had a spirit that revolted at the idea of eating bread that was won either by falsehood or servility.
"'Tis done!" said I, thinking aloud, "in the plain red coat of a trooper, none will ever discover Basil Gauntlet—the disinherited heir of Nether wood!"
"So you are still resolved to be one of us?" said Charters, when we met early in the morning.
"Yes."
"'Tis well; life is a lottery—let us go and draw," he observed, figuratively.
"I would rather go and drink," added Kirkton, who, after our late potations, looked rather red about the eyes.
"Try a dram—and then hey for the road; but we must have our new comrade attested. Landlord, where is a justice of the peace to be found?"
"Plague on them—they're thick as blackberries on both sides o' the Border," growled the host.
"For one, there is Nathan Wylie, the writer at—" began the hostess.
"No—no—I go not before him!" said I, with a pang of sorrow in my heart, as I thought of Ruth, whose sweet image came upbraidingly to my memory.
"Well—who next?" asked the corporal, while buckling on his sword.
"Sir Basil Gauntlet, at the hall—or his nephew, the young Laird that is to be."
"Worse still!" I exclaimed, passionately; "I shall not go before them either."
"Zounds, but you are hard to please," said Charters as he eyed me keenly, but with something of commiseration too. "What is your name?"
"That I shall tell the magistrate," I replied, evasively, not having yet thought of a nom de guerre. Then the corporal asked me—
"Is this Sir Basil a relation, a connection, or what?"
The landlord laughed while eyeing my scurvy appearance, as if he thought it very unlikely I could be either; my breast burned with suppressed mortification and rage, but I continued calmly,
"It matters little—I go not before him."
"You are regularly enlisted, my lad," said the corporal, soothingly, "and must go before some one."
"Try the rector," said I.
"We have no rectors in Scotland," said the landlord, bluntly.
"Well, there is one over the Border, a few miles from this——"
"On the road to Rothbury—good," said Charters.
"He is a justice of the peace, and such a one! Odsbud! he sent a child, four years old, to hard labour for having a tame pheasant for a pet."
"How?"
"As a poacher," added Boniface, with a rough malediction.
"Will he do?" asked the Corporal.
"Yes," said I, briefly; "and now let us begone."
"Bravo! Now, Kirkton—brandy and water—boot and saddle, and let us be off. Our new comrade shall share our horses alternately, for we have nearly twenty miles to travel to-day before we reach head-quarters."
As the troopers brought from the stable to the inn door their two stately grey chargers, in all the trappings of a heavy dragoon regiment, with saddle-cloth, scarlet valise, long holsters, powerful bits, and chain bridles, an old horse that was passing, heavily laden with the wares of an itinerant basket-maker, pricked up his ears, and switched his short shorn tail, and seemed to eye us wistfully.
"That is an old trooper," said Kirkton; "by Jove, the poor animal actually recognises our red coats, and, doubtless, his heart warms to the colour. Landlord, a feed of oats, and here is the money for it—a feed of oats for the old nag-tailed trooper. He has been a heavy dragoon horse—see here are the white spots where the carbine has galled him. Well, well! it makes one sad to think that the dashing horse, which has perhaps borne a brave fellow in many a charge, which has fed from his hand, and slept beside him in the bivouac, comes down to the sand cart and knacker's yard at last!"
"After all, his rider's fate is seldom better in the end," said the corporal, "and I don't think either you or I, Tom, will have our tombs in Westminster Abbey. But bring the brandy; confound care and reflection; let us live while we can and be jolly, too!"
I rode each of their horses alternately after we crossed the Border, as we proceeded southward, along the road towards the Rectory.
My comrades were rather silent now, and I was often left to my own reflections. The day was gloomy and lowering, and the wind came in gusts; dark clouds rolled in masses across the grey, sullen sky; the distant Cheviot hills looked brown and sombre; but nature's aspect failed to impress me with gloom as on the preceding day.
I felt a glow of new enthusiasm kindling in my heart. The hopes inspired by ambition, pride, and all a boy's visions of military pomp and glory, grew strong within me. To wear a fine uniform—to ride a showy horse—to be a captain in a year—to return to the village—to marry Ruth—and to flaunt my finery before the people, were my most prominent ideas. A year? Amid all this, I remembered that my dashing comrade, Jack Charters, spoke of having been a soldier for ten years, and was only a corporal still!
This was far from encouraging; but then I should be certain to prove so much more sober, steady, and industrious than Jack; and so I rode on scheming out my future career, with great brilliance and rapidity, and much to my own satisfaction.
I was full of such thoughts when we reached the gate of the Rectory, which was a quaint old building, having its deeply embayed and mullioned windows nearly hidden by luxuriant masses of ivy, vine and clematis. It was small, and covered simply with bright yellow thatch; but its walls were thick and strong, though they had often been subjected to fire by the invading Scots, in the stormy times of old.
We left the horses at the gothic porch, and, by a servant in livery, were ushered into the library, where the Rector was seated at luncheon, with a decanter of port before him, and he had been evidently dozing over his books and papers.
To attest recruits at once, without the many formalities of medical inspections and so forth, was common in those days, and for long after. Had it been otherwise, the public would never have been favoured with the memoirs of Phœbe Hassel, who served seven years in H. M. 5th Foot, or of Mrs. Christian Davis, another woman, who served in all the battles of Marlborough, as a trooper in the Scots Greys, who had her head fractured by the splinter of a shell at Ramillies, and who enjoyed a pension of one shilling per diem till she died, and was buried with military honours in the ground belonging to Chelsea Hospital.*
* "Records of the Scots Greys," pp. 49-51. Phœbe Hassel was alive at Brighton in 1821. She served in the West Indies, and at Gibraltar.
The Rector was a fine old gentleman, with a mild and rubicund visage; and he had been, I knew, my father's early friend and schoolfellow; so I resolved to enter the service under some such name as Smith or Brown instead of my own.
He started from his waking dream as the two dragoons clattered in. I can still see, in memory, that quaint old library in which he received us, with its dark oak shelves of goodly folios and quartos, in calf bindings, dark and brown; some partial gleams of sunlight streaming through the lozenged window panes and carved stone mullions fell on the old man's shining head and scattered silver hairs—on the floor of polished oak, on the furniture of walnut wood, and on the russet tints that time had cast over everything.
"What bring you here, my friends—not a deserter—this boy?" stammered the Rector, with sadness and pity in his eye and tone, while wheeling his elbow chair half round.
"No, no, reverend sir, a recruit," replied Charters, with a military salute; "a recruit whom we wish you to attest."
"That slender boy for the cavalry!" exclaimed the Rector.
"He will do excellently for the troop of light horse which Captain Lindsay of ours is raising," suggested Kirkton.
I was then slightly formed, and looked, I knew, wan, dejected, and poor. The good rector surveyed me through his gold-rimmed spectacles with an unmistakeable expression of pity on his benign and fatherly face; after a pause—
"Have you considered this matter well?" he asked; "but you look weary, my poor lad! take some wine—there are glasses on the buffet—corporal, help yourself."
"I thank your Reverence," said Charters, who never required a second invitation of this kind, and so filled our glasses with port—his own twice in succession, and drank, muttering, "Good stuff this! I've tasted worse—in a palace too."
"Have you weighed well the step you are about to take?" continued the rector, impressively.
"Yes," said I, firmly.
"But your parents——" he urged gently: "think of them."
"I have none," said I, in tones that faltered as my heart swelled with emotion, and the old man shook his head sadly.
"You will never be able to undergo the hardships of foreign service," said he, shaking his head.
"Then I will help to fill the trenches," said I, with that spirit of bravado which we so often feel or assume in youth.
The corporal said something approvingly; then the rector sighed, as he dipped a pen in an inkhorn, and placed on his desk a printed document, preparatory to filling up the blanks, or fifteen replies to questions always asked of a recruit at attestation.
"What is your name?" he began.
Now it was that my heart failed me, and the question had to be repeated three times, as I could not tell an untruth.
"Do you hear me," he added, gently; "your name?"
"Basil Gauntlet."
He threw down the pen and half rose from his chair.
"The son of Major Gauntlet, of Granby's Dragoons?"
"Yes," I replied, while both of the soldiers turned, and faced me inquiringly, and with unconcealed interest in their eyes.
"Oh, Basil," exclaimed the rector, who knew at once both me and my story, "this is sad, most sad. Consider, I pray you, consider well. I have some right to say this, for your father was one of my dearest and earliest friends."
"Sir, you know how his father has treated me; thus, that which might have been dire necessity at first, has now become my choice. I am resolved to be a soldier, so I beg of you to hasten over this most mortifying scene, and let me begone."
In the irritation I felt at my position, I spoke somewhat sternly, even ungraciously, to this good man; so Charters came to my aid, and urged that time pressed, so the formal oath was administered, which bound me "faithfully and honestly to defend his Majesty King George, his heirs and successors, in person, crown, and dignity, against all enemies, and to obey all the orders of his Majesty, his heirs and successors, and of the generals and officers set over me," &c.
This oath made me irrevocably a soldier.
The old rector shook my hand, and his voice faltered, for he felt more emotion than I did, as he accompanied us to the porch of his house, where he kindly bade us adieu.
"We shall have a most disastrous war ere long," said he, "and I may say in the words of Goldsmith, 'Go, my boy, and if you fall, though distant, exposed and unwept for a time, by those who love you, the most precious tears are those with which Heaven bedews the unburied head of the soldier.' Farewell, my friends. God bless you!"
"We thank you, sir," replied Charters, with a profound salute, and with an air that had something lofty and noble in it, as he sprang on his horse and gathered up his reins; "a good man's blessing can never be given in vain, especially to such reckless dogs as we are; but, believe me, sir, that though but poor soldiers now, my comrades and I can never forget that we have been, and may again be, gentlemen!"
We were once more on the open highway. I was glad the scene was over, but I still seemed to see the mild and benevolent face of the old rector, and to hear his parting words.
"So we have really had the honour of enlisting the heir to a baronetcy?" said Kirkton. "You were right to come with us. I thought you were meant for better things than to be squire to a knight of the bluebag."
"What is that?"
"A lawyer. Were we quartered in Bath your story would make your fortune. Any heiress would marry you for the prospect of the title."
"That is flattering," said I; and then thinking of Ruth, I added, "Why not for love?"
"Bah!" said Charters, "people don't marry for that, except in plays and novels."
"Jack, you are a misanthrope in spite of yourself," said Kirkton; "but as this youth is the heir to a baronetcy——"
"I beg to have your promises of keeping the matter a secret when we reach the regiment?" said I, with great earnestness.
"Why?" asked they.
"Because I owe nothing to my family, and hate them as they hate me—the living at least. Whatever I may do to gain honour or promotion, will never be acknowledged by my comrades, who will be certain to attribute success to the fortuitous circumstance of family and name."
"Egad! you are right, boy, and I love and respect your spirit," said Charters. "I have more than once seen a poor fellow gain the ill-will and malevolence of his comrades for being better born or better bred than those among whom his lot was cast, and thus bitterness came with prosperity."
"Your solemn pledge, then, that you will keep my secret?" said I, earnestly.
They promised, and I may add that the worthy fellows never betrayed it; but they too had each a secret, which they confided to me as we sat together over a glass of beer in a wayside tavern, a few miles from Rothbury.
"If I had not had the misfortune to have been born a genius, I should perhaps never have been a soldier," said Kirkton.
"A genius—you?" exclaimed the corporal, laughing.
"Sorry am I to say it, for 'tis the fate of geniuses to be restless and unfortunate. True; Boetus, who wrote on the battle of Philippi, died in prison; Plautus was a baker's drudge and turned a hand-mill; Terentius Publius was the slave of a Roman senator——. And I, Thomas Kirkton, am a private in the Scots Greys!"
"'Tis an ungrateful world, my friends," added the other, with an air of tragi-comedy that made us both laugh.