Apple Tree Lean Down by Mary E. Pearce

Author:Mary E. Pearce [Pearce, Mary E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Family Saga, Romance, nineteenth century, victorian, vintage, English countryside, nostalgia, love and marriage, country life
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Family Saga)
Published: 2017-12-09T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

There came a day when Betony, aged four and a half, could not be found in the house or garden; the orchard, the fields, or the workshop yard. Beth said she must have wandered out to the road, and Jesse, thinking how easy it would be for a small girl to stumble into the Derrent, ran along the bank as far as the village, searching the waters as he went. But Betony was perfectly safe. She was with a crowd of people that had gathered to watch a platoon of soldiers drilling on the green.

That was the first summer of the war in South Africa. The platoon, belonging to the Three Counties Infantry, based at Capleton Wick, was marching southward, collecting recruits as it went, and Betony, hearing the beating of the drum, had followed them all the way to the green. She could scarcely be bothered to glance at Jesse as he arrived and joined the crowd. She had eyes and ears only for the tall sergeant and the marching soldiers and the little drummer in red-flashed helmet and red sash. And Jesse, swinging her up into his arms, was also happy to stay and watch.

A last command rang out, the drumbeats stopped, and the soldiers, drawn up in a block of fours, stood at ease on the green. The sergeant turned towards the crowd and his glance happened to light on Jesse.

‘Ah! Now you’re the kind of man we want exactly!’

‘What, me?’ said Jesse, with a burning face. ‘Laws, I shouldn’t be no sort of use as a soldier!’

‘You surely have some care for your queen and country, haven’t you, young fellow?’

‘Why, yes, I suppose, but ‒’

‘You can’t have Jesse,’ said Oliver Rye. ‘He’s lame in one foot.’

‘Oh! That’s different! That’s no use to us. And no one expects a lame man to volunteer as a soldier.’

The sergeant was casting about again, looking for more likely material, when old Dr Mellow, who had once been a great scholar at Oxford, but who now lived like a tramp on Huntlip common, pushed to the very front of the crowd and spoke out in his splendid voice.

‘Why should any man, lame or not, fight in a war that doesn’t concern him and which shouldn’t have been begun in the first place?’

‘Why?’ said the sergeant. ‘Surely every man in England must want to protect his interests from the thieving Boer?’

‘What interests are those?’ the doctor asked, and turned to Mattie Makepiece, standing beside him. ‘Have you got a gold-mine in Cape Province?’

‘Not unless my Uncle Albert’s gone and left me one in his will,’ said Mattie. ‘And that ent likely, ’cos that was the Arge-and-nines he went to, I believe.’

‘And you?’ said the doctor, turning to old Mark Jervers, the roadmender, on his other side. ‘Have you got a diamond-mine in Kimberley?’

‘Not now,’ Mark said sadly. ‘I had to sell it to pay for me boots.’

‘Then, sergeant, what interests are these you’re asking the men of this village to fight for?’

‘England’s interests are yours and mine, sir!’ the sergeant said angrily.

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