Colonel Greatheart

by H. C. Bailey

  Colonel Stow cursed his King for a fool. Then he looked wistfully at his friend. "I wish to God you had my place, George."

  "O, have done with that!" cried Royston impatiently. "But, i'gad, Jerry, I'll wager we are come to the wrong side."

  "I'll not believe that," said Colonel Stow. "There are men worth making here. But faith, George, if you wish yourself out of it, I can scarce bid you stay, now.… Will you go?"

  Royston hesitated some while. And often afterward, as he hints, wished that he had taken the occasion and given his friend a good-by. But, "I'll see it out," he growled and he gave a queer laugh of contempt.

  Colonel Stow gripped at his hand with glad enthusiasm. "Faith, you were made for a friend, George," says he in a low voice.

  Royston laughed again. He despised himself on many counts. It was a foolishness to stay where neither money was to be won nor name. It was a foolishness to be governed by friendship. It was worst foolishness of all that friendship should be mingled with what mocked it, a shameful care for the woman of his friend's love. Lucinda, who was surely very sorry for it at the last, had power with Colonel Royston and he despised himself and stayed—strange company for those gentlemen volunteers, who, splendid, undisciplined and useless as brave, filled up the army of the King.

  The gentlemen volunteers had no doubt of the issue of the war. It was as certain that the King would conquer as that neither horse nor foot could stand up for their charge. They looked for utter victory and the stamping out of Puritans and the rule absolute of their divine King. There was a fair array in Oxford of some such faith as this. Even Rupert had still in his sanest hours a vast confidence in himself. The rout at Marston had hurt his pride and taught him the grip of fear. But if he was soured by it, he was soon his own master again. He bore his work hard and the politicians fretted him into black hours, but he could not long together doubt himself an unconquerable artist in war. He and his friends all counted on triumph and did earnestly desire it. The politicians, my Lord Digby, Mr. Hyde and the rest, quarreling with him on all else, were agreed in this. The unhindered rule of the King, no less, was their goal, and if some of them seemed to march to it by strange ways they were entirely sure of attaining. But the most of them, the great mass of the army, knew no such flaming faith. They fought because it was the game, and when the game was no more amusing would give it up light of heart. Whether King ruled or Puritan troubled them little. England would be a fat pleasant country still.

  There were some, too, not the least wise, not the least honest, who, while they fought against the Puritan, feared the triumph of the King. Men who loved England and sane life better than any passionate creed, they saw no end to the war in the victory of either army, no future for England under either sway. It is not always the men of low spirit who rank with the Laodiceans.

  When he walked the meadows at dawn one day Colonel Stow saw a gentleman of a disorderly dress and a bent back who went uncomfortably. His black hair was all unkempt, his face of an unwholesome darkness. He knit his hands behind him strenuously and talked to himself. The matter of his discourse was but one word. In a shrill and sad accent he ingeminated—"Peace! Peace!"

  Colonel Stow passed him and saw the melancholy of his eyes. It was my Lord Falkland, the secretary of state. Colonel Stow watched him a while and went away thoughtful.

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  Chapter Eighteen

  My Lord Digby Upon Woman

  "HARRY, you are a fool," says my Lord Digby in a didactic manner.

  "Bah, I amuse myself," quoth my Lord Jermyn, and flicked his ruffles.

  "Precisely," said my Lord Digby.

  They were of the gay company in the Broad Walk where the elms were newly bright and the wood pigeons murmurous. My Lord Jermyn had just been displaying himself with Lucinda, beside whose lithe grace, it is to be confessed, he was comically brief. Lucinda was remarkable in a gown of summer green and she wore it worthily.

  "Woman," says my Lord Digby with his wise air, "woman, if she is only amusing, is not even that. She is not worth playing with unless she is too dangerous for play. You play with all, Harry, which means that all play with you."

  "You are like a rattle," said my Lord Jermyn frankly. "That good girl—who, thank Heaven, is neither good nor much a girl—is like a hogshead of Spanish wine. I like to taste her, but I've no mind to take the whole of her. O, we understand each other."

  "My dear Harry, you never understood a woman yet. It is why you have such success with them. Madame Lucinda is a bigger soul than you. She has passions." (My Lord Jermyn chuckled profanely.) "If you were a man with red blood I might be sorry for you. She believes in herself. It is the last worst fault in woman. But she will give a man or two magnificent moments." He contemplated my Lord Jermyn benignly. "Harry, I should like to see you in a tragedy. You would be amusing."

  "You could never be that, George," said my Lord Jermyn with a yawn of candor.

  But my Lord Digby was born for the didactic. "She is a woman of the grand order. She'll use her strength. She needs all men to be her slaves, and knows not to deny herself. A woman worth dying for—if you are of that temper. She is not for you, Harry. You would give her little sport. But she is real—real. Non equidem invideo. Miror Magis. I adore her, but I have no use for her, and pray Heaven she hath none for me. I find mine own occasion in one of your shy maids who scarce knows what womanhood is for—one whose glory is to spend herself in a man's service, not a man in hers—some sweet, virtuous fool. I was never a tragedian, Harry."

  "You have words in you, not blood, George," said my Lord Jermyn, who honestly conceived himself a creature of romance.

  It was growing late for the meadows. Who felt themselves the models of the court had made for the town already, and Lucinda was going, too, with Colonel Stow at her side. You may guess what brought Colonel Royston to mingle with that array of courtiers. Lucinda had taught him weakness. He would not go seek her out. What a pox was she to him? But he would walk where she might be seen. Why the fiend should he run away from a woman? When he saw her swaying on Colonel Stow's arm, he did not deign to see her. But he heard the ring of her laugh, and when she beckoned he thrust through to her side.

  "You make yourself a stranger, sir. Or is it an enemy?" she cried, with sparkling eyes.

  "It is an indifferent, madame," said Colonel Royston.

  "And that is a challenge. Nay, but first I challenge you. Doubtless you have wished your friend joy of me. Pray, give me joy of your friend." It was her first confession of surrender.

  Colonel Royston bowed. "Do you doubt your joy, madame, or his?"

  She looked at Colonel Stow, and they laughed together. "Nay, we know," she said. Then, clinging to Colonel Stow's arm in a dainty poise, she turned to Royston. "But, indeed, sir, we would have you glad with us."

  "You are marvelous kind," said Colonel Royston. His color was high, and he would not look in her eyes.

  "I'faith, we are greatly happy," she murmured, and, drawing close, looked up at Colonel Stow with a strange, tender smile. Then she gave some of the kindness of it to Colonel Royston. "I want you to know," she said simply.

  Royston bowed again. His lower lip was drawn in.

  "In truth, George should share of the best we have," said Colonel Stow.

  "There is much," said Lucinda in a low voice.

  Colonel Royston, looking up, saw their eyes meet again, saw her hand linked close and pressing his friend's.

  She turned quickly. "Some day," there was a laugh in her voice, "some day, sir, mayhap you will know."

  "Oh, you expect too much of me," cried Royston sharply.

  At the strange tone she seemed to start and draw against Colonel Stow, and, so swaying with him step for step, looked full at Royston. "Nay, I think I know you," she said softly.

  "If you do," cried Royston, "you know why I leave you now." And he plunged away down Merton Street.

  Lucinda looked surprised at Colonel Stow, who laughed. "Nay, dear, I think we be too mu
ch lovers for George, who is not in that way."

  "Is it so indeed?" said Lucinda innocently, and was very kind to Colonel Stow thereafter.

  Five and twenty miles away in the old guild house at Aylesbury, where the wounded Puritan soldiers made hospital, one of their nurses knelt by her bedside, praying. With a work that left her scant time to think of herself or days to come, Joan Normandy felt life easier. Still there were hours when a lonely fear possessed her, and she found no help but in prayer. It was not much for herself. She had no right to ask of God an easy life. If she could not be happy in her lot, the fault was her own, and she must cure herself. She prayed for him, her wonderful hero of the springtime. Colonel Stow never knew how magnificent he was to one woman. His gaiety and the ease of his strength fascinated. Even when she trembled for his scorn of the laws she worshipped, there was a strange glamour about him. He was clothed with the glory of a maid's first dream of man. In the tiny bare attic she knelt all white by her bed, and gave herself to a pure yearning for him, as a mother yearns over her child. She had no thought nor hope to see him again in life, but with all the power of her being she prayed for him, she pleaded with God in tears and trembling that he might be safe and given a good happiness. It was of her faith that one soul given utterly to striving for another's good might prevail with God. She tried.

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  Chapter Nineteen

  Newbury Vale

  "BEFORE this business be done, we shall be the longest-winded army in England," wrote Sir William Waller to his masters, the Parliament. He was maneuvering across the middle west with an army of infantry against the King's horsemen. He complains, moreover, that when he rebuked his men they sang to him, and the strain was this, a low song:

  Home! Home! We would be home!

  Ha' done with your thorough,

  Flite ye the morrow,

  We'll drive our furrow

  Home! Home!

  The hint was broad. "An army compounded of these men will never go through with your service," Sir William Waller protested. But all the while the men who had overthrown Rupert on Long Marston Moor, the Ironside cavalry, were drawing slowly south. They suffered from only one disease—their general, my Lord Manchester. His lieutenant general, a Mr. Cromwell of Huntingdon, mentioned it.

  While Waller was amid these pathetic difficulties, and my Lord Manchester in no hurry to help him, the King was fighting my Lord Essex in a comical campaign that made Rupert swear but did little else good or ill.

  It served Colonel Stow, however. His regiment, exercised daily in tactic, not tried too soon by the stern shock of a stricken field, grew ready and quick. He began to be proud of it, and the men, who found he never risked them idly and always had a care for them, approved him mightily. Even his officers were learning. All went well. But he discovered with surprise that half England cared nothing for the war. The country folk had an impartial disgust for Cavalier and Puritan. The Cavalier fed on them without paying, the Puritan cut down the Maypole and stopped the morris dance. How should they care for either victory? What hope for them in the rule of plunderer or the rule of killjoy? Colonel Stow, watching, understanding—it was the best part of his mind that he understood unlike men—asked himself sometimes what he had to make in it all. But he seemed to see clear. With such fair-weather armies—he had not met the Iron side cavalry—the war must drag out long, and in a long war men who knew their trade would come to power. He saw himself a conqueror among the conquerors, a master in England and Englishmen glad of him.

  In fine, he esteemed himself still highly. It was a state necessary to his happiness. Lucinda had long letters of joy. Do not doubt that she was happy, too. I think she believed in him always.

  The wind of Waller's army held out. My Lord Manchester, "sweet, meek man," stayed his hand from breaking the head of his lieutenant general, and joined them at Reading before Rupert and the King could eat them up. There was marching and counter-marching in the vale of Kennet, and at last, under the wooded hills that sheltered Newbury, the outposts met, and the Puritan troopers flung themselves from the saddle and knelt to thank God for the sight. There was no doubt of battle. Cromwell was there, and Rupert.

  Where Speen Hill rises above the meeting rivers Rupert chose the ground, and through an autumn day the King's infantry scarred the hill's wealth of timber with a breastwork. Below, in the wooded angle between the clear waters of Lambourne and Kennet, musketeers lined the hedgerows, and in the open meadows under the guns of Donnington castle the horsemen awaited their chance. It was a position folly could hardly weaken. Colonel Royston, riding along the front with his friend, allowed himself to admire. "If they have any gentleman that is fool enough to fight, he will break his nose here, Jerry," said he.

  "There is Cromwell, whom the Palatine calls Ironside," said Colonel Stow. "They say he is very hot in the charge. I'gad, I need some faith to believe it, for when I knew him in Stoke he was half a natural by reason of too much religion."

  Colonel Royston laughed. "Jerry, my dear, pray for a few fanatics. None else will dare come at you."

  But Colonel Stow was something pensive. "'Tis a footman's battle, I fear. I find no space for a shock. These hedgerows are mighty neat for your musketeers, but 'tis no gentlemanly way of fighting. Gustavus for me, and a brigade at speed."

  Colonel Royston shook his head. "A wasteful tactic, Jerry. Give me Scotch musketeers and Swedish pikes, and I'll break the best charge you bring. It's an archaic beast, your horseman. The world is the footman's now."

  "Alack for a dull gray world," sighed Colonel Stow.

  "Faith, you are born out of time, Jerry. You should have ridden with Monsieur Amadis of Gaul, or the late Lancelot of the Lake. You like your fights romantic. I only want to win."

  Colonel Stow laughed. "Ah, I want much more than that."

  Royston looked at him queerly. "Yes, you want too much, you and she."

  They parted soon, and in silence, and Colonel Stow came back to his quarters at Donnington, shadowed with solemnity.

  Major Dick Stewart was awaiting him, more flamboyant than for many a day. "Aha, Colonel;" says he, with a knowing grin at Colonel Stow's grave face, "you apprehend a battle, eh?"

  "Nay," said Colonel Stow sweetly, "my apprehension is there may be none."

  "Ay, you burn for one, indeed."

  Colonel Stow opened his eyes. "I had hoped you had learned your position, Major," he said sadly.

  "And I thought you would forget your promise, ods bones!" cried the major in triumph.

  "Oh." Colonel Stow understood. "I am engaged to cross swords with the gentleman of the regiment who does most gallantly. But indeed, Major, I never hoped for the pleasure of meeting you."

  Major Stewart snarled.

  "I wonder you think this manner worth while," said Colonel Stow pensively. "It does not amuse me, and appears painful to yourself."

  "Zounds, sir," cried the major, "we shall see if you can jeer tomorrow."

  "I warn you, 'tis in battle I am most satiric," said Colonel Stow.

  The major flung away from him, muttering.

  On the next day, when dawn broke dull red, the King's men saw a brigade counter-marching round the base of the hills by Winterbourn to take them in the rear. At the same time there was a feint upon the front by some horsemen, who got nothing but a rough handling for their pains. The growing light showed hill and valley alive with men. It was a strange, checkered array, more like a dozen armies than two, for countless colors and fashions and strange panoplies broke the dull peace of meadow and hedgerow. Trooper and footman of those notable Ironside regiments of the Eastern Counties were indeed alike in tawny red. Rupert's horsemen had no color save blue and steel. But the rest of the army was any color, and all colors—orange and green and white, violet and gray, as it were a masquerade on the hills. Only my Lord Manchester had made his men wear green boughs in their motions, so that they marched like a copse at war.

  The matches were blazing along the hedgerows. The mu
sketeers filled their mouths with bullets and felt the powder cases in their rattling bandoleers. Already the Puritan pikemen were closing upon Speen Hill. The quarter cannon and sakers behind the breastwork there began to fire, and played hard, and, quoth Sir William Waller, "they made the ground mighty hot." But though their ranks were rent, the pikemen worked on steadily, and when it came to push of steel the musketeers had no hope to stand against them, but ran from hedge to hedge. Slowly the green boughs won to the foot of the hill, and Skippon, the sergeant major general, who knew his trade, halted them there a while, though the cannon were fierce upon them. Then he raised the shout, "The sword of the Lord!" and sprang forward up the hill. By the breastwork there was a long, stern fight. They had no room for skilled tactic, or the power of massed numbers; it was man for man, and the victory to the stronger, stubborner men. The King's men had courage. There was no question of that in the wildest, riotous regiment. But it needed more than courage and a sportsman's joy of a fight to hold out till dark, thrusting and bearing the thrust of the eighteen-foot pikes. While the sun was still high, the breastwork was won, and the Puritans came over it, singing a psalm:

  Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place

  In generations all,

  Before Thou ever hadst brought forth

  The mountains, great or small.

  They "clapped their hats on the touch-holes of the guns to claim them for their own," halted to form again, and charged on down the hill after the King's men. But there was to be no easy victory. As soon as they were off the hillside the hedgerows rattled musketry, and their front was smitten away. Still they had the heart to force advance, but it was difficult and slow, and the night near.

  Down in the vale Rupert's horsemen faced Cromwell. This way and that they moved through the meadows, each seeking his chance to take the other at advantage. Most of Rupert's men were cursing the tactic and delay, and around Colonel Stow his officers babbled of white-livered, water-blood Roundheads. Colonel Stow laughed. "There's a soldier commands there, gentlemen," he said, nodding to the green boughs of the Puritan troopers. "A man who knows when not to fight."