“I understand,” answered George, smiling. “It was a gallant thing, and no doubt you saved some lives as well as some powder.”
“Maybe so, sir,” said Lance, a dull red showing under the tan and sunburn of more than fifty years. “My Lord Fairfax made more of it than ’twas worth. So, when he had left the army, and I thought he had forgot me, he wrote and asked if I would come to America with him, and I came. Often, in the winter-time, the earl does not see a white face for months except mine, and then he forgets that we are master and man, and only remembers that he is my old commander and I am an old soldier. The earl was a young cornet in 1710-12, and was with the armies in the Low Countries, where we had given Marshal Villars a trouncing, and he gave Prince Eugene a trouncing back, in exchange. So, sometimes, of the long winter nights, the earl sends for me and reads to me out of books about that last campaign of the Duke of Marlborough’s, and says to me, ‘Lance, how was this?’ And, ‘Lance, do you recollect that?’ Being only a soldier, I never did know what we were marching and countermarching for, nor so much as what we were fighting for: but when the earl asks me what we were doing when we marched from Lens to Aire, or from Arleux to Bachuel, I can tell him all about the march—whether ’twas in fine or rainy weather, and how we got across the rivers, and what rations we had; we often did not have any, and the mounseers were not much better off. But, Mr. Washington, a Frenchman’s stomach is not like an Englishman’s. They can sup on soup maigre and lentils after a hard day’s march, and then get up and shake a leg while another fellow fiddles. But an Englishman has to have his beef, sir, and bacon and greens, and a good thick porridge with beans in it. I think all the nourishment the Frenchmen get goes into their legs, for they will march day and night for their Grand Monarque, as they call him, and are always ready to fight.”
“I hope we shall not have to fight the French up in Pennsylvania to make them keep their boundaries,” said George, after a while, in a tone which plainly meant that he hoped very much they would have to fight, and that he would be in the thick of the scrimmage. “And now tell me how the Duke of Marlborough looked in action, and all about Prince Eugene, and the siege of Bouchain, until it is time to go to the earl. But first sit down, for you have had a hard day’s travel.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Lance, sitting down stiffly, and snuffing the candle with his fingers.
CHAPTER V
“You are asking me more, sir,” said Lance, with something like a grim smile on his countenance, “than I could tell you in a month, or two months. But I can tell you how the Duke of Marlborough looked in battle, for I belonged to the foot-soldiers, and we were generally standing still for a time, until the cavalry had showed us where we were wanted, and we could see the generals riding over the field. The duke, you must know, sir, was not so very young when I served under him, but he was still the handsomest man in the British army. They say when he was a lieutenant that all the great ladies fell in love with him, and the one he married, I have read in a book, he was much in love with, but a deal more afraid of her than ever he was of the Grand Monarque and all his armies. They say it was a joke in England that the great duke obeyed his duchess and trembled at her word. But I dare say he is not the only man who ever ruled men and then let his wife rule him. The duke was a noble sight at parade, with his splendid chestnut charger, his uniform of red and gold, his chapeau with plumes, and his great periwig. But, to my mind, he was a finer sight when the French artillerymen were ploughing up the ground—the French are monstrous good gunners, Mr. Washington, and hang on to their batteries like the devil—and the musketry screaming around, and that old fox, Marshal Villars, was hammering us in a dozen places at once. Then the duke was as calm as a May morning, and was full of jokes with his officers, and whistling to himself a queer kind of a tune with no tune to it. But old Villars never caught him napping, and was caught napping himself once. That was the time we took Bouchain.”
George was very much on his guard not to let Lance know that he had never heard of Bouchain—or if he had read of it in the life of Marlborough, he had forgotten all about it—so he only said:
“Oh yes—about Bouchain.”
“Well, sir, in the spring of 1711 the great duke arrived in the Low Countries—and glad enough were all to see him—for not only, we knew, we could lick the French and Bavarians if we were under him—but the army was always paid when the great duke commanded, and fed and clothed, too. I remember when he came back that time he brought us forty thousand woollen shirts. The kings and queens thought that we, the common soldiers, did not know what was going on, but we knew the stay-at-homes were trying to ruin the duke at court, and that he had hardly been treated civilly when he got to England, and that three colonels—Meredith, Macartney, and Heywood—had been cashiered for drinking ‘confusion to the enemies of the Duke of Marlborough.’ It was while he was away that the allied army—as ours and our allies was called—had got a handsome drubbing at Almanza, in Spain, and I can’t say that any of us cried over it; only we thought we might get drubbed ourselves if the duke didn’t come back. So you may be sure, Mr. Washington, that when the news came that the whole army was to rendezvous at Orchies, and the duke had landed in Holland on his way to us, we felt better. The queen and the ministry and the parliament might look coldly on him, but on that bleak April day, when he rode into our cantonments at Orchies, every British soldier raised his voice in a huzza for the great duke.
“Marshal Villars had been all the winter throwing up redoubts and all sorts of works along his lines, from Bouchain, on the Scheldt, which lay here”—Lance stooped down at this and drew an imaginary line on the floor, and George got off the bed, and, taking the candle, sat down on the floor the better to understand—“along the Sanset, which runs this way. Lord, Mr. Washington, I’ll have to use the boot-jack to show you about Bouchain and Arras.”