The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales Page 6

  CHAPTER VII.

  THE CORRIEMUIR PEEL TOWER.

  Well, it would weary me, and I am very sure that it would weary youalso, if I were to attempt to tell you how life went with us after thisman came under our roof, or the way in which he gradually came to winthe affections of every one of us. With the women it was quick workenough; but soon he had thawed my father too, which was no such easymatter, and had gained Jim Horscroft's goodwill as well as my own.Indeed, we were but two great boys beside him, for he had beeneverywhere and seen everything; and of an evening he would chatter awayin his limping English until he took us clean from the plain kitchen andthe little farm steading, to plunge us into courts and camps andbattlefields and all the wonders of the world. Horscroft had been sulkyenough with him at first; but de Lapp, with his tact and his easy ways,soon drew him round, until he had quite won his heart, and Jim would sitwith Cousin Edie's hand in his, and the two be quite lost in listeningto all that he had to tell us. I will not tell you all this; but evennow, after so long an interval, I can trace how, week by week and monthby month, by this word and that deed, he moulded us all as he wished.

  One of his first acts was to give my father the boat in which he hadcome, reserving only the right to have it back in case he should haveneed of it. The herring were down on the coast that autumn, and myuncle before he died had given us a fine set of nets, so the gift wasworth many a pound to us. Sometimes de Lapp would go out in the boatalone, and I have seen him for a whole summer day rowing slowly alongand stopping every half-dozen strokes to throw over a stone at the endof a string. I could not think what he was doing until he told me ofhis own freewill.

  "I am fond of studying all that has to do with the military," said he,"and I never lose a chance. I was wondering if it would be a difficultmatter for the commander of an army corps to throw his men ashore here."

  "If the wind were not from the east," said I.

  "Ah! quite so, if the wind were not from the east. Have you takensoundings here?"

  "No."

  "Your line of battleships would have to lie outside; but there is waterenough for a forty-gun frigate right up within musket range. Cram yourboats with tirailleurs, deploy them behind these sandhills, then backwith the launches for more, and a stream of grape over their heads fromthe frigates. It could be done! it could be done!"

  His moustaches bristled out more like a cat's than ever, and I could seeby the flash of his eyes that he was carried away by his dream.

  "You forget that our soldiers would be upon the beach," said Iindignantly.

  "Ta, ta, ta!" he cried. "Of course it takes two sides to make a battle.Let us see now; let us work it out. What could you get together?Shall we say twenty, thirty thousand. A few regiments of good troops:the rest, _pouf!_--conscripts, bourgeois with arms. How do you callthem--volunteers?"

  "Brave men!" I shouted.

  "Oh yes, very brave men, but imbecile. Ah, _mon Dieu_, it is incrediblehow imbecile they would be! Not they alone, I mean, but all youngtroops. They are so afraid of being afraid that they would take noprecaution. Ah, I have seen it! In Spain I have seen a battalion ofconscripts attack a battery of ten pieces. Up they went, ah, sogallantly! and presently the hillside looked, from where I stood, like--how do you say it in English?--a raspberry tart. And where was our finebattalion of conscripts? Then another battalion of young troops triedit, all together in a rush, shouting and yelling; but what will shoutingdo against a mitraille of grape? And there was our second battalionlaid out on the hillside. And then the foot chasseurs of the Guard, oldsoldiers, were told to take the battery; and there was nothing fineabout their advance--no column, no shouting, nobody killed--just a fewscattered lines of tirailleurs and pelotons of support; but in tenminutes the guns were silenced, and the Spanish gunners cut to pieces.War must be learned, my young friend, just the same as the farming ofsheep."

  "Pooh!" said I, not to be out-crowed by a foreigner. "If we had thirtythousand men on the line of the hill yonder, you would come to be veryglad that you had your boats behind you."

  "On the line of the hill?" said he, with a flash of his eyes along theridge. "Yes, if your man knew his business he would have his left aboutyour house, his centre on Corriemuir, and his right over near thedoctor's house, with his tirailleurs pushed out thickly in front.His horse, of course, would try to cut us up as we deployed on thebeach. But once let us form, and we should soon know what to do.There's the weak point, there at the gap. I would sweep it with myguns, then roll in my cavalry, push the infantry on in grand columns,and that wing would find itself up in the air. Eh, Jack, where wouldyour volunteers be?"

  "Close at the heels of your hindmost man," said I; and we both burst outinto the hearty laugh with which such discussions usually ended.

  Sometimes when he talked I thought he was joking, and at other times itwas not quite so easy to say. I well remember one evening that summer,when he was sitting in the kitchen with my father, Jim, and me, afterthe women had gone to bed, he began about Scotland and its relation toEngland.

  "You used to have your own king and your own laws made at Edinburgh,"said he. "Does it not fill you with rage and despair when you thinkthat it all comes to you from London now?"

  Jim took his pipe out of his mouth.

  "It was we who put our king over the English; so if there's any rage, itshould have been over yonder," said he.

  This was clearly news to the stranger, and it silenced him for themoment.

  "Well, but your laws are made down there, and surely that is not good,"he said at last.

  "No, it would be well to have a Parliament back in Edinburgh," said myfather; "but I am kept so busy with the sheep that I have little enoughtime to think of such things."

  "It is for fine young men like you two to think of it," said de Lapp."When a country is injured, it is to its young men that it looks toavenge it."

  "Aye! the English take too much upon themselves sometimes," said Jim.

  "Well, if there are many of that way of thinking about, why should wenot form them into battalions and march them upon London?" cried deLapp.

  "That would be a rare little picnic," said I, laughing. "And who wouldlead us?"

  He jumped up, bowing, with his hand on his heart, in his queer fashion.

  "If you will allow me to have the honour!" he cried; and then seeingthat we were all laughing, he began to laugh also, but I am sure thatthere was really no thought of a joke in his mind.

  I could never make out what his age could be, nor could Jim Horscrofteither. Sometimes we thought that he was an oldish man that lookedyoung, and at others that he was a youngish man who looked old. Hisbrown, stiff, close-cropped hair needed no cropping at the top, where itthinned away to a shining curve. His skin too was intersected by athousand fine wrinkles, lacing and interlacing, and was all burned, as Ihave already said, by the sun. Yet he was as lithe as a boy, and he wasas tough as whalebone, walking all day over the hills or rowing on thesea without turning a hair. On the whole we thought that he might beabout forty or forty-five, though it was hard to see how he could haveseen so much of life in the time. But one day we got talking of ages,and then he surprised us.

  I had been saying that I was just twenty, and Jim said that he wastwenty-seven.

  "Then I am the most old of the three," said de Lapp.

  We laughed at this, for by our reckoning he might almost have beenour father.

  "But not by so much," said he, arching his brows. "I wasnine-and-twenty in December."

  And it was this even more than his talk which made us understand what anextraordinary life it must have been that he had led. He saw ourastonishment, and laughed at it.

  "I have lived! I have lived!" he cried. "I have spent my days and mynights. I led a company in a battle where five nations were engagedwhen I was but fourteen. I made a king turn pale at the words Iwhispered in his ear when I was twenty. I had a hand in remaking akingdom and putting a fresh king upon a great throne
the very year thatI came of age. _Mon Dieu_, I have lived my life!"

  That was the most that I ever heard him confess of his past life, and heonly shook his head and laughed when we tried to get something more outof him. There were times when we thought that he was but a cleverimpostor; for what could a man of such influence and talents beloitering here in Berwickshire for? But one day there came an incidentwhich showed us that he had indeed a history in the past.

  You will remember that there was an old officer of the Peninsula wholived no great way from us, the same who danced round the bonfire withhis sister and the two maids. He had gone up to London on some businessabout his pension and his wound money, and the chance of having somework given him, so that he did not come back until late in the autumn.One of the first days after his return he came down to see us, and therefor the first time he clapped eyes upon de Lapp. Never in my life did Ilook upon so astonished a face, and he stared at our friend for a longminute without so much as a word. De Lapp looked back at him equallyhard, but there was no recognition in his eyes.

  "I do not know who you are, sir," he said at last; "but you look at meas if you had seen me before."

  "So I have," answered the Major.

  "Never to my knowledge."

  "But I'll swear it!"

  "Where then?"

  "At the village of Astorga, in the year '8."

  De Lapp started, and stared again at our neighbour.

  "_Mon Dieu_, what a chance!" he cried. "And you were the Englishparlementaire? I remember you very well indeed, sir. Let me have awhisper in your ear."

  He took him aside and talked very earnestly with him in French for aquarter of an hour, gesticulating with his hands, and explainingsomething, while the Major nodded his old grizzled head from time totime. At last they seemed to come to some agreement, and I heard theMajor say "_Parole a'honneur_" several times, and afterwards "_Fortunede la guerre_," which I could very well understand, for they gave you afine upbringing at Birtwhistle's. But after that I always noticed thatthe Major never used the same free fashion of speech that we did towardsour lodger, but bowed when he addressed him, and treated him with awonderful deal of respect. I asked the Major more than once what heknew about him, but he always put it off, and I could get no answer outof him.

  Jim Horscroft was at home all that summer, but late in the autumn hewent back to Edinburgh again for the winter session, and as he intendedto work very hard and get his degree next spring if he could, he saidthat he would bide up there for the Christmas. So there was a greatleave-taking between him and Cousin Edie; and he was to put up his plateand to marry her as soon as he had the right to practise. I never knewa man love a woman more fondly than he did her, and she liked him wellenough in a way--for, indeed, in the whole of Scotland she would notfind a finer looking man--but when it came to marriage, I think shewinced a little at the thought that all her wonderful dreams should endin nothing more than in being the wife of a country surgeon. Stillthere was only me and Jim to choose out of, and she took the best of us.

  Of course there was de Lapp also; but we always felt that he was of analtogether different class to us, and so he didn't count. I was neververy sure at that time whether Edie cared for him or not. When Jim wasat home they took little notice of each other. After he was gone theywere thrown more together, which was natural enough, as he had taken upso much of her time before. Once or twice she spoke to me about de Lappas though she did not like him, and yet she was uneasy if he were not inin the evening; and there was no one so fond of his talk, or with somany questions to ask him, as she. She made him describe what queenswore, and what sort of carpets they walked on, and whether they hadhairpins in their hair, and how many feathers they had in their hats,until it was a wonder to me how he could find an answer to it all.And yet an answer he always had; and was so ready and quick with histongue, and so anxious to amuse her, that I wondered how it was that shedid not like him better.

  Well, the summer and the autumn and the best part of the winter passedaway, and we were still all very happy together. We got well into theyear 1815, and the great Emperor was still eating his heart out at Elba;and all the ambassadors were wrangling together at Vienna as to whatthey should do with the lion's skin, now that they had so fairly huntedhim down. And we in our little corner of Europe went on with our pettypeaceful business, looking after the sheep, attending the Berwick cattlefairs, and chatting at night round the blazing peat fire. We neverthought that what all these high and mighty people were doing could haveany bearing upon us; and as to war, why everybody was agreed that thegreat shadow was lifted from us for ever, and that, unless the Alliesquarrelled among themselves, there would not be a shot fired in Europefor another fifty years.

  There was one incident, however, that stands out very clearly in mymemory. I think that it must have happened about the February of thisyear, and I will tell it to you before I go any further.

  You know what the border peel castles are like, I have no doubt.They were just square heaps built every here and there along the line,so that the folk might have some place of protection against raiders andmosstroopers. When Percy and his men were over the Marches, then thepeople would drive some of their cattle into the yard of the tower, shutup the big gate, and light a fire in the brazier at the top, which wouldbe answered by all the other Peel towers, until the lights would gotwinkling up to the Lammermuir Hills, and so carry the news on to thePentlands and to Edinburgh. But now, of course, all these old keepswere warped and crumbling, and made fine nesting places for the wildbirds. Many a good egg have I had for my collection out of theCorriemuir Peel Tower.

  One day I had been a very long walk, away over to leave a message at theLaidlaw Armstrongs, who live two miles on this side of Ayton.About five o'clock, just before the sun set, I found myself on the braepath with the gable end of West Inch peeping up in front of me and theold Peel tower lying on my left. I turned my eyes on the keep, for itlooked so fine with the flush of the level sun beating full upon it andthe blue sea stretching out behind; and as I stared, I suddenly saw theface of a man twinkle for a moment in one of the holes in the wall.

  Well I stood and wondered over this, for what could anybody be doing insuch a place now that it was too early for the nesting season? It wasso queer that I was determined to come to the bottom of it; so, tired asI was, I turned my shoulder on home, and walked swiftly towards thetower. The grass stretches right up to the very base of the wall, andmy feet made little noise until I reached the crumbling arch where theold gate used to be. I peeped through, and there was Bonaventure deLapp standing inside the keep, and peeping out through the very hole atwhich I had seen his face. He was turned half away from me, and it wasclear that he had not seen me at all, for he was staring with all hiseyes over in the direction of West Inch. As I advanced my foot rattledthe rubble that lay in the gateway, and he turned round with a start andfaced me.

  He was not a man whom you could put out of countenance, and his facechanged no more than if he had been expecting me there for atwelvemonth; but there was something in his eyes which let me know thathe would have paid a good price to have me back on the brae path again.

  "Hullo!" said I, "what are you doing here?"

  "I may ask you that," said he.

  "I came up because I saw your face at the window."

  "And I because, as you may well have observed, I have very much interestfor all that has to do with the military, and, of course, castles areamong them. You will excuse me for one moment, my dear Jack."

  And he stepped out suddenly through the hole in the wall, so as to beout of my sight.

  But I was very much too curious to excuse him so easily. I shifted myground swiftly to see what it was that he was after. He was standingoutside, and waving his hand frantically, as in a signal.

  "What are you doing?" I cried; and then, running out to his side, Ilooked across the moors to see whom he was beckoning to.

  "You go too far, sir," said he, angril
y; "I didn't thought you wouldhave gone so far. A gentleman has the freedom to act as he choosewithout your being the spy upon him. If we are to be friends, you mustnot interfere in my affairs."

  "I don't like these secret doings," said I, "and my father would notlike them either."

  "Your father can speak for himself, and there is no secret," said he,curtly. "It is you with your imaginings that make a secret. Ta, ta,ta! I have no patience with such foolishness."

  And without as much as a nod, he turned his back upon me, and startedwalking swiftly to West Inch.

  Well, I followed him, and in the worst of tempers; for I had a feelingthat there was some mischief in the wind, and yet I could not for thelife of me think what it all meant. Again I found myself puzzling overthe whole mystery of this man's coming, and of his long residence amongus. And whom could he have expected to meet at the Peel Tower? Was thefellow a spy, and was it some brother spy who came to speak with himthere? But that was absurd. What could there be to spy about inBerwickshire? And besides, Major Elliott knew all about him, and hewould not show him such respect if there were anything amiss.

  I had just got as far as this in my thoughts when I heard a cheery hail,and there was the Major himself coming down the hill from his house,with his big bulldog Bounder held in leash. This dog was a savagecreature, and had caused more than one accident on the countryside; butthe Major was very fond of it, and would never go out without it, thoughhe kept it tied with a good thick thong of leather. Well, just as I waslooking at the Major, waiting for him to come up, he stumbled with hislame leg over a branch of gorse, and in recovering himself he let go hishold of the leash, and in an instant there was the beast of a dog flyingdown the hillside in my direction.

  I did not like it, I can tell you; for there was neither stick nor stoneabout, and I knew that the brute was dangerous. The Major was shriekingto it from behind, and I think that the creature thought that he washallooing it on, so furiously did it rush. But I knew its name, and Ithought that maybe that might give me the privileges ofacquaintanceship; so as it came at me with bristling hair and its nosescrewed back between its two red eyes, I cried out "Bounder! Bounder!"at the pitch of my lungs. It had its effect, for the beast passed mewith a snarl, and flew along the path on the traces of Bonaventure deLapp.

  He turned at the shouting, and seemed to take in the whole thing at aglance; but he strolled along as slowly as ever. My heart was in mymouth for him, for the dog had never seen him before; and I ran as fastas my feet would carry me to drag it away from him. But somehow, as itbounded up and saw the twittering finger and thumb which de Lapp heldout behind him, its fury died suddenly away, and we saw it wagging itsthumb of a tail and clawing at his knee.

  "Your dog then, Major?" said he, as its owner came hobbling up. "Ah, itis a fine beast--a fine, pretty thing!"

  The Major was blowing hard, for he had covered the ground nearly as fastas I.

  "I was afraid lest he might have hurt you," he panted.

  "Ta, ta, ta!" cried de Lapp. "He is a pretty, gentle thing; I alwayslove the dogs. But I am glad that I have met you, Major; for here isthis young gentleman, to whom I owe very much, who has begun to thinkthat I am a spy. Is it not so, Jack?"

  I was so taken aback by his words that I could not lay my tongue to ananswer, but coloured up and looked askance, like the awkward country ladthat I was.

  "You know me, Major," said de Lapp, "and I am sure that you will tellhim that this could not be."

  "No, no, Jack! Certainly not! certainly not!" cried the Major.

  "Thank you," said de Lapp. "You know me, and you do me justice. Andyourself, I hope that your knee is better, and that you will soon haveyour regiment given you."

  "I am well enough," answered the Major; "but they will never give me aplace unless there is war, and there will be no more war in my time."

  "Oh, you think that!" said de Lapp with a smile. "Well, _nousverrons!_ We shall see, my friend!"

  He whisked off his hat, and turning briskly he walked off in thedirection of West Inch. The Major stood looking after him withthoughtful eyes, and then asked me what it was that had made me thinkthat he was a spy. When I told him he said nothing, but he shook hishead, and looked like a man who was ill at ease in his mind.