Little Gentlemen (Epilogue)

[igenlode]

I *finally* got round to uploading the brief epilogue with which I was struggling before Christmas; it strikes me that the connection between "hurry up and get dressed" and "the offending blanket" is not terribly clear :-(
However, it's done, and the story can now disappear into the complete obscurity with which the other chapters have been met.

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Epilogue on a Departure

The blossoms on the boughs were already more sparse than they had been a week ago, when Venya had arrived, and the ground below was more deeply drifted in white. The forms of the horse and rider as they passed through the grove were clearly visible from a distance, even from above and in the early-morning light, and Venya watched from the window as the soldier’s dark figure dwindled towards the high-road, out of sight. The boy was shifting unconsciously from foot to foot and wriggling his toes in the rug, for despite the blanket that Raoul, solicitous of his protegé, had thrown over his shoulders, he was only half dressed and still bare-legged, and the floorboards at the chateau were cold. But at the sound of hoofs in the courtyard below he had jumped up and run to the window. He sighed.

“D’Artagnan is gone?” he ventured, a little wistfully, as Raoul, still doing up the many buttons of his doublet, came to join him at his vantage-point. The distant rider touched his horse into an easy canter and was lost to view.

“He can’t be here for long,” Raoul said, determinedly cheerful, although his eyes followed after d’Artagnan’s vanished form in a way that suggested that, shorn of the excitement of that vivid personality, life at the chateau would seem rather dull for a few days at least. “He’s a soldier, and has to stand guard over the Queen and the little King— and fight in wars against the Lorrains and the Spanish.”

D’Artagnan had regaled the boys with the most highly-coloured of accounts about the Franche-Comté, and unlaced his shirt to show the great livid scar of the wound he had received there. Raoul drew an imaginary sword with a flourish and made a series of ferocious passes, stamping across the floor. Venya regarded his antics with alarm.

“Oh, the Spanish won’t get this far,” Raoul assured him, misunderstanding, “so there’s nothing to be scared of. Better hurry up and get dressed.”

But since he accompanied this advice with a friendly cuff on the ear, Venya, already indignant, rose up and fell upon him. This, at least, was a form of combat he understood and in which he was proficient.

The two boys tussled amicably together for a minute. But Raoul’s greater length of limb was no match for his opponent’s determination and hard-won experience, and presently —brought to the ground by a highly unorthodox manœuvre that might not have passed muster in any manual of etiquette, but would certainly have gained d’Artagnan’s appreciation— he found himself effectively extinguished by the offending blanket, with Venya seated triumphant upon his muffled form.

“Not scare,” he pointed out as his victim extricated himself, and Raoul, scrambling to his feet with a grin, shook the hair from his eyes and swept him a neat bow.

“I surrender, monsieur... and withdraw the word.” He tossed the blanket back to its original recipient. “But you’d still better get dressed, or you’ll freeze— and monsieur le comte won’t like that!”

This being a threat far more effective than the Spanish, the two boys presently went down to breakfast together in their full finery, and in perfect harmony with one another. Only Venya bore his head a little higher than before.