XXIV
Of My Ride with the Despatches
And now, whether I would or not, I was forced into active participation in this war which was being fought out ’twixt Englishman and Englishman, and made to take a part in it which I had never dreamt of playing. It was the first day of July, . A hot, cloudless day it had been, with never a speck on the sky that one could interpret into a sign of rain. We had got our hay in, and Timothy Grass and another man were busily engaged in thatching the two great stacks that we had built at the end of our stackyard. Early as it was, our corn was beginning to turn, and I looked forward to commencing harvest in three weeks’ time, feeling sure that the oats would then be ready. We had had no rain during the hay-harvest, and I hoped that we should be similarly favoured during the corn-harvest. If only the war would keep away from us until we got our corn in, I felt it would be well.
I walked out with Rose that evening through the meadows leading towards Went Vale. Unconsciously my feet turned in the direction I had taken that spring morning long years before, when I set out for the ruined sheepfold to find the stormcock’s nest.
“It was the first time I had gone bird’s-nesting that year,” I said to Rose as we came upon the scene. “I remember how quickly I ran off when old Jacob told me about the stormcock’s nest. It was in yonder tree; see, there is where I climbed up the trunk. Up I climbed and down I fell, lighting on my thick skull. And then came an angel clad in a red hood and cloak, and singing as she came.”
“And she found,” said Rose, “a sturdy-looking boy, sitting upon the ground and rubbing the crown of his head with both hands. A boy who evidently liked not to have anything done for him, for when the angel, as you call her, wanted to help him he would have no help. Nay, in those days, Will, if I had offered to kiss you better, as we do with children, I think you would have refused.”
“Did I refuse when you kissed me that day you went away with your father?”
“My father?” she said. “I wonder where he is, Will. And poor Jack? ’Tis a dreadful thing, this war, to separate loving hearts one from another.”
“It is, Rose, for it is separating you from me. How long, I wonder, shall we have to wait? Every moment seems a day, every day a year.”
So talking, we went down into the valley and turned along to Wentbridge by the road along which I had passed that night I found Philip Lisle and Rose on the bridge. We stayed there talking a few minutes, and then went slowly up the hill towards Dale’s Field. The Great North Road was quiet that night; quieter indeed than it had been for many weeks, for lately there had been a regular stream of folk along it in both directions. That night, however, we climbed the hill out of Wentbridge without passing or meeting aught more than a drover taking his cattle by easy stages to Doncaster.
“How quiet the road is tonight!” said Rose, as we came to the level against Dale’s Field. “Listen, there is not a sound to be heard.”
We stood still to listen. My ears, quick to hear anything in the open air, caught the faint sound of a horse’s gallop far off along the road.
“Yes, there is a horseman coming along,” I said; “I can hear his horse’s feet. He is a long way off yet—somewhere between Barnsdale and Wentbridge, I think.”
“Let us stand under the trees here and watch him pass,” said Rose; “I like to wait in the darkness when all is quiet, and hear the horse’s feet come nearer and nearer along the highway.”
We drew back into the shadow of the trees that overhung our barns, and waited, listening to the sound that came nearer and nearer, now sinking almost into silence as horse and rider dipped into some slight hollow, now growing louder as they climbed some little hill. After awhile we heard him coming down the road into Wentbridge; then the horse clattered loudly over the bridge, and the sounds grew fainter as his gallop dropped to a trot, and then to a walk as he mounted the stiff hill we had just climbed. And at last we heard the panting and blowing of the tired animal as it came out upon the level road again, and its rider strove to spur it forward at top speed.
“Here he comes,” said Rose, pointing through the dim light. “Poor horse, how tired it seems!”
Tired indeed the horse was, from the jaded way it stepped out. But what was the matter with the rider, who reeled in his saddle like a drunken man, clinging to it with one hand, while he grasped the reins with the other?
“On, good Diamond!” he was saying as he came abreast of us. “On, on, ere this devilish wound overcome me! O, Heaven! how the blood runs yet! Diamond, I say—”
“Oh!” said Rose, clutching my arm. “See, he is falling!”
I started forward just in time to catch the man as
