CHAPTER II
St. Arnaud and Gavin travelled all that day through a scene of desolation, but the sun shone, and they were approaching a part of the country where at least food could be had, and their circumstances seemed so much improved, that all at once the world took on an altogether different aspect. No man could long endure, and live, the hideous depression from which St. Arnaud had suffered since Rosbach; and when his soul made a final rally, it was to perch upon heights of hope and joy. He felt sure they would beat Frederick of Prussia, and one short month would see a revival of the fortunes of the Empress Queen. He so expressed himself to Gavin, who had never suffered any depression whatever. And each found a source of vivid interest in the other’s personality. St. Arnaud had never met a man in the least like this young French-Englishman, and the story of the mother, the woman who was Lady Hamilton by right, starving and freezing with her child, but always working in her miserable attic in a great foreign city, was moving to him. He saw that the son of such a mother would be of tough fibre. As for Gavin, St. Arnaud’s beauty, grace, and superior knowledge of the world were so captivating, that the riding by his side in an officer’s uniform was an intoxicating pleasure.
“Often,” thought Gavin to himself, looking sidewise at St. Arnaud’s clear and handsome profile, “have I watched you at parade, and longed—oh, how I have longed—to be on equal terms with you. I shall be yet, because I am resolved, if a man has any share in his own destiny, to be one day a sublieutenant; and then—pouf! the rest is easy.” He would have dearly liked to ask St. Arnaud questions, but he remembered that, although they rode side by side, he was still a private soldier. St. Arnaud, however, took the privilege of an officer, and questioned Gavin freely.
“Can you read and write?” he asked.
“Like a notary,” replied Gavin promptly. “My mother took good care to give me an excellent English education herself, and she was well qualified, too. Often has she taught me out of her head when she would be working at her needle for a living, for to that has Sir Gavin Hamilton reduced my mother; and he wanted me to go home and live with him—may the devil take him now and forever! My mother taught me also a little Latin, a little Spanish, and I myself learned a good deal of German from those Austrian allies of ours.”
“You far excel me,” responded St. Arnaud, “and yet I had the best teachers in France.”
At which Gavin replied proudly: “I can ask for wine in four languages.”
“I only wish you had a chance to ask for it in one—to make signs, for that matter.”
They rode on in silence for a few moments, when Gavin spoke again.
“My Captain,” he said in a coaxing voice, “I have something to ask of you—a favour—such a favour as a man asks but once in a lifetime.”