Until the Colours Fade Read Free Page A

perfectly aware of George’s dilemma. ‘Should be able to get a shot at the embankment from down there,’ he went on, pointing down the slope to his right with his cane to a place where the rocky ground flattened out into a small plateau.
    Braithwaite listened speechless and the blood rushed to his cheeks; nor, Tom imagined, would the soundness of this dandified civilian’s advice improve George’s temper.
    ‘I know my duty, sir,’ snapped George and then barked out the order to dismount and draw carbines. While the troopers fumbled with their ramrods and cartridges, the stranger said with quiet emphasis:
    ‘Some shots in the air to start with might discourage them, I suppose?’
    ‘I’m no butcher,’ George replied stiffly.
    ‘I hope not, Mr Braithwaite,’ replied the other with a hint of a smile. ‘Wouldn’t care to be a witness in the coroner’s court.’
    Tom noticed George’s face freeze as he recognised his adviser.
    ‘Crawford,’ he gasped.
    The gentleman raised his hat a fraction before turning on his heel and walking back to the ‘fly’ with the same unhurried step.
    As the troopers started to slide down the wet rocks to the flatter ground below, Tom was wondering what he should do when the driver of the ‘fly’ came up to him, touched his hat and murmured :
    ‘Gen’lman wants a word with you.’
    Strickland dismounted and the driver took his horse’s bridle. The interior of the ‘fly’ was dimly lit by reflected light from the carriage lamp outside. A sudden feeling of unease made him pause before mounting the step. He heard an impatient voice:
    ‘Come on, man; those fools are nervous enough to shoot at anything that moves.’ Tom sat down on the worn leather seat. His host smiled reassuringly, displaying a glimpse of white and very regular teeth. ‘Yeomanry regiments are all the same.’
    The silence which followed, although embarrassing Tom, evidently did not have that effect on his neighbour, for when Tom made as if to speak he was silenced with a wave of the hand. Irritated at first by this gesture, Tom soon realised that the other was listening for the soldiers’ shots. He had heard George call this stranger Crawford, and this intrigued him, since George hoped to marry a Miss Catherine Crawford. From George – who was lonely as well as rich and, when drunk, condescended to treat his father’s humble artist with a measure of familiarity – Tom knew something of the Crawfords. The head of the family was Rear-Admiral Sir James Crawford, a widower, at present at sea. Catherine lived in her father’s house, four miles from Rigton Bridge, with her brother Charles, a naval officer currently ashore on half-pay. From the frequency with which George spoke of Charles’s excellent professional prospects and his future as heir to his father’s baronetcy, Tom had assumed that if they were not already friends, George had such a relationship in mind. Strangely George had never mentioned another brother. But possibly this newly arrived Crawford was a cousin or more remote relative. As he was pondering the stranger’s identity, Tom heard two stuttering volleys ring out. Then an eerie silence was followed by a distant roar of rage and fear, broken by the screams of a man who must have been hit. At this sound, Crawford leapt from his seat and flung open the door, his face contorted with anger. Tom got out too, in time to see torches being flung away on the embankment, and figures running pell-mell along the parapet and jumping down into the road on the far side of the blazing vehicles.
    ‘That’s that then,’ said Crawford with a shrug of the shoulders , apparently in control of his indignation, but then bursting out: ‘Should have used regular troops. Any half-wit ought to have guessed what was coming when he saw no crowd at the station .’
    Tom was uncertain whether Crawford’s anger stemmed from a fastidious dislike of military bungling or from sympathy with the rioters, who had been