CHAPTER VII

HOW THE WORLD DEALT BY A GENTLEMAN

He could get only a broken sleep, because of a door that was always slamming; sometimes men were laughing, too, but the crash of the closing door was louder still, so loud Hugh woke at last. “It was all a bad dream,” he said in his thoughts, with a lightening of the heart that made him feel like his old self. But next moment his hand touched the damp boards of the doorway in which he was crouched and found them real; across the roadway the dim houses, with the mist that comes before day hanging over them, were real; and so was the blank sky. Then all that had happened last night was true: there was a lad named Hugh Gwyeth, whose father would have none of him, who had not a friend to turn to, nor a penny to his name, nor, except for this cold doorway whither he had crawled, a place to lay his head. Hugh sat up and, as if it were another man’s concern, checked it all off dispassionately.

Just then a drunken trooper came reeling down the empty street, and Hugh found himself making nice calculations as to whether the man’s zig-zag progress would plunge him into a muddy puddle just opposite the doorway, or bring him safely by on the far side. When the fellow staggered past unsplashed Hugh lost interest in him, and began counting the windows of the opposite houses, that were slowly lighting up with the dawn. Presently a man on a red horse came clicking down the narrow way, then two men helping a comrade home, then a little squad of foot soldiers under a brisk officer; and after that townsmen and stray troopers came in greater numbers, the doors and windows opened, and the day began.

All the long morning Hugh tramped the streets of Shrewsbury, aimlessly, for he had nowhere to go. Everscombe was not to be thought of; even if he had been at the very gates of the manor house, even if his grandfather had found it in his heart to relent, the affair at the “Golden Ram” would have made forgiveness impossible to his kinsfolk. Neither could he go back to Strangwayes, who had lent him a horse for which his father was to pay; at least the bay would compensate for that, but he had no right to ask farther kindness which he could never return. And then Strangwayes’ new friends had shown him out of doors; perhaps Dick would not care to have him come back.

With such broken reflections Hugh loitered through the town, and now and again, in gazing at the swarming men and brave horses that filled the streets, tried to forget his miserable plight. About noon he stood many minutes in a gutter and listlessly watched a great body of horse march by. He heard some one say the king was going northward on an expedition, and he asked himself if Colonel Gwyeth went too, and was troubled an instant till he realized that he had now no call to follow.

Then he let all that pass, and thought only that the autumn air was chilly and he was hungry, so that though he pulled his belt a notch tighter it availed nothing. A man must eat, and out in the world food came only by work, he realized; and with that he fell to wondering if there were any labor to which he might turn his hand. A small knowledge of Latin, small skill with a sword, and the ability to back a horse,—that summed up his accomplishments. Hugh told them over with a feeling that either he had not been equipped for such a fortune as this, or he had struck out for himself long before his education was completed. But if he could ride and handle a sword he might turn trooper, so, coming in sight of a smith’s shop and men, one of whom looked a petty officer, lounging about it, he ventured up shyly and, as the fellows were in good humor, questioned them tentatively, if they might not perhaps care to enroll him among them. They only laughed at him, and the petty officer bade him run home and grow. With his hopes a bit dashed Hugh walked away, but, strengthened by having a purpose, tramped the town all the afternoon in search of employment among the horse soldiery. But those he applied to either lost their tempers and swore at him, or laughed and chaffed him; and the foot soldiers, to whom he finally offered himself, were even more contemptuous. “You? ’Twould need another fellow to bear your musket,” the last man he questioned answered him gruffly.

That night Hugh slept in the sheltered corner of an alley, and two officers, tramping through at midnight with a torchbearer, stumbled over him. One kicked him, the other, glancing at him, flung him a penny before he passed on. When the coin fell beside him Hugh did not move, but after the torch had blinked out of sight he groped his hand along the damp ground, shaking with nervousness that he did not find the penny, and, as his fingers closed on it, almost sobbed with relief. He sought out a bakehouse at once, and sitting on some dingy steps opposite waited the hungry hours till morning broke, the shop opened, and bursting in headlong he could buy his bread. It went very quickly, leaving him hungrier than ever, but he got no more till next morning, when a gentleman paid him twopence for holding his horse.

He had now given over tramping the town, for he knew it was useless; he had sought employment in every troop in Shrewsbury, and everywhere he had been rebuffed. So the most of the day he sat on a doorstep and, idly watching the street and the sky, tried to forget what life had looked like four days ago. When he was ordered off the step he loitered slowly out by the western gate, and, finding him a snug corner in the lee of a shed opposite a wayside alehouse, lay down for the night. He was beginning now to get a realization of what had befallen, as a man who has been stunned recovers consciousness with a sense of pain, and he had a feeling that if he could have cried a long time it would have eased him, but the hard manhood that had been thrust upon him would not suffer that nor anything which might relieve him.

Toward morning a noise of loud singing woke him. He tried to sleep again, but the singing worried him and besides he felt cold and cramped. He rose at last to stretch himself, and stepping out into the road saw, sprawled across the doorstone of the alehouse, a big dark figure that was yelling lustily at the sky. “Have you come at last?” the fellow cried, “I said to myself,—maybe you heard me,—‘Bob, if thou keepst it up time enough some mother’s son will come.’ Look ’ee here, lad, you’re to do me a kindness. I am quite sober, mark you, sober as parson himself, but somewhat is amiss with my legs. An you’ll aid me to the stable you’ll do his Majesty a great service.”

There might be a ha’penny at the end of it, so Hugh suffered the trooper, as he judged the man to be, to lean on him, and they set out unsteadily. What with keeping his charge erect and looking to the rough highway lest they both go down, he paid little heed to the landmarks, though once, at a half-articulate order from his companion, he swerved over to the left and, keeping a dark house on one hand, walked toward a dim light. They were just near enough for Hugh to perceive it shone from an isolated low building, when an armed man challenged them, but at a thick reply from the trooper let them go stumbling on. The familiar stamp of horses was now audible, the light shone clearer, and at last Hugh guided his shambling comrade in at the open door of a stable. On either hand the uncertain light of a brace of lanterns showed rows of dim stanchions and tethered horses, before it merged away into the dark lofts and vast roof. In the centre of the stable the lanterns flung a clear circle of yellow light, and there four fully armed carabineers, seated on kegs or sprawling on the floor, were playing at dice. The sound of footsteps made them look up, and one half swore, while another started as if to sweep up dice and boxes. “Does this man belong to you?” Hugh asked desperately, for his companion, with his florid face suddenly turned melancholy, was leaning against the doorpost and blinked at the light, but said nothing.

“Yes, he belongs to us,” replied one with a beard, who seemed the leader of the party, “the more sorrow to us.” He threw his dice deliberately: “Seven-tray-cinque.—Pitch him down on the hay yonder.”

“Nick, how can you use a comrade so?” maundered the prodigal, as Hugh helped him across the stable and suffered him to roll over on a heap of hay.

“Be thankful you get no worse. If old Jack Ridydale had not shogged off with the troop to Chester, you’d get the devil for this; he’s the man could give it you.”

“Hardwyn has mind to make himself such another,” said one of the younger and less assured men.

“Jeff Hardwyn is a cursed better soldier than ever thou’lt be,” Nick replied concisely, and the play went on.

None took heed of Hugh, so, after a moment’s hesitation, he sat down on the loose hay, where his drunken friend had fallen sound asleep. He had no call to linger, but the hay was far softer than the ground of the streets, so he sat there and listened to the gruff talk of the men and the click of the dice. At length he stretched himself out, and, watching the dim lanterns flicker, he, too, went to sleep.

Of a sudden he was wakened by some one’s pitching him roughly off the hay. There was dull morning light in the stable now, men were feeding and grooming horses, and right over him stood a shock-headed fellow, with more of the peasant than the trooper still visible in him, who demanded, “What beest thou here for?”

“’Twas no harm,” Hugh answered, getting up stiffly; he had meant to walk away, but in the stable there was at least a roof over him, and he hesitated. “I can feed your horse for you,” he ventured.

“Then run fetch a bucket of water,” the other commanded. Hugh caught up the bucket, and, hurrying out into the chill of the morning, found between the stable and the big house a well where he drew the water, as he was bidden. After that he fetched more water, brought fodder, rubbed down a horse,—it was marvellous the amount of work that could be found for an extra pair of hands to do. But, weary and faint though he was, Hugh labored on bravely, with a special effort to satisfy Jonas Unger, the trooper who had first roused him, in which he succeeded so well that when at last the men tramped away to breakfast Unger permitted him to follow along. Crossing an open space betwixt the great house and the stables, they came out through a hedge-gap upon a byway and scattered cottages where the carabineers were quartered. Hugh slunk into the common room of one of these cottages at the heels of Unger and the man called Nick Cowper, and there, sitting at table, with white lips and heavy eyes, found the roisterer he had helped home the night before. Bob Saxon, as his mates called the fellow, was past much talk this morning, and the others were in tolerably good temper, so Hugh was suffered to take a share of their rations, which he ate on the doorstone. The food was coarse, but there was almost enough to satisfy him, so, in the hope of earning more, when the men went back to the stables he followed them.

After a time a curt officer entered the stable, and, ordering the little troop to horse, led it away to be exercised. Hugh cleaned out a stall and had some speech with other ragged hangers-on who made refuge in the stable, but, liking the company little, soon held his peace and gave heed only to his work. About noon the troop returned with the horses all sweaty, and a deal of unharnessing and rubbing down to be done. Hugh came forward to take his share and was removing the saddle from Saxon’s horse, when he thought to hear mention of a name that made his hands shake at their task. Pausing to look up, he saw it was a sunburned man with a twist of mustache who was speaking: “Ay, ’twas one of the colonel’s men brought the tidings. The king has surely taken in Chester.”

“Good news, in truth, Corporal Hardwyn!” replied Cowper, whom the man addressed. “And we tied here to hammer wit into dunder-pated raw levies! Ay, ’twas like Colonel Gwyeth to serve us such a trick.”

Hugh heard no more for the rush of blood to his temples; still he could not believe his bad fortune had served him such a cruel turn, so, when he had put Saxon’s horse into its stall, he went up to Cowper and asked point-blank: “An’t like you, who commands this troop?”

“What is that to you, sirrah?” asked Cowper.

“Is it—Alan Gwyeth?” Hugh persisted.

“Yes, hang you!” replied the man, and boxed his ears for asking.

Even as he reeled back with his face tingling, Hugh found room in his heart to be thankful that he had told no one his name. These knaves must never know it was their commander’s son whom they had the right to knock about. Perhaps the dignity of his family required that he should leave the place at once, he reflected dolefully, as he groomed Cowper’s horse; but, after all, it was better to drudge for his father’s troopers than to beg in Shrewsbury streets.

So Hugh stayed on at the troop stables, where he groomed horses, and cleaned stalls, and fetched and carried with all the strength and readiness necessary to please a score of rough masters. From day’s end to day’s end it was hard, hateful labor with no sign of release. Once, to be sure, at the news that the king had returned from Chester, something that was half hope and half dread awoke in him, for there was a chance that at any hour Colonel Gwyeth might come to the stables. But soon he learned that his father had gone foraying to the eastward, so even that small hope vanished, and life meant only to work with all his strength, sleep on the hay, share the troopers’ rations, and through all endure such abuse and brutality as they might choose to inflict upon him.

It was not long before Hugh dropped his old methods of classification and grouped men in two great divisions: those who struck at you for the fun of seeing you dodge, and those who struck to hurt you. Of the former class was Bob Saxon, who had a certain good nature about him, though his horseplay was apt to be rough. He had been to the wars in Germany, Hugh gathered from the big stories the fellow told, and for that reason Hugh felt drawn toward him; at least, Saxon knew the land where he had been born, and he knew Colonel Gwyeth. “There’s a man would take a trot through hell, if he had the word,” he once said admiringly of the colonel, whereat Hugh felt a feeble thrill of pride, and held his chin higher, till Cowper happened along and set him to cleaning his boots. Hugh considered there was nothing good to be said for Nick Cowper; he had an unconscious knack of setting tasks that peculiarly unbefitted a gentleman, while at all times he was brutal with the fierce roughness of a seasoned campaigner, who struck to hurt. To be sure, no malice seemed behind his brutality; it was merely his way of reducing command to terms of the senses, but that gave small remedy to Hugh’s skin or to his wounded dignity, when Cowper sent him stumbling about his work with his lip cut or his nose bleeding.

But Hugh was to learn there were rougher dealers even than Cowper, when he came into conflict with Jeff Hardwyn, the corporal. He was one who seldom lifted his hand against any man, but when he ordered the troopers obeyed; and Hugh, with a feeling that he must not get the fellow’s ill-will, jumped to do his bidding and called him “sir.” But, for all these poor defences, he at last fell under the corporal’s displeasure, by such trivial happenings that even looking back he did not understand how it had come to pass. There had been a day of heavy rains that turned the roads to mud, in the midst of which Unger sent Hugh tramping through Shrewsbury in quest of a man he was not able to find. When the boy returned late in the afternoon, drenched and tired, he discovered the whole errand had been a mere hoax for the diversion of Unger and Saxon and the half-dozen others who were loafing in the dry stable. “Next time, pray you take a fair day to be witty,” Hugh said, trying not to show temper, and was starting out to forage hungrily for dinner when Hardwyn bade him stop and tighten a buckle on his saddle girth. Pulling off his coat, Hugh turned to the job, which he found harder than he thought, so he did it hastily, then ran out to seek his dinner, and, for his late coming, got none at all.

But when he splashed wearily back to the stable he suddenly forgot all the petty misadventures of the luckless day, for over by the stalls Hardwyn was standing with his brows drawn together ominously. “Can you not tighten a buckle better than that?” he asked, and tapped the saddle at his feet with the toe of his boot.

“I did it as well as I knew, sir,” Hugh replied.

“Well, I’ll learn you to do it better next time,” said Hardwyn without temper, and crossing the stable picked up a heavy horsewhip.

Hugh thought that the heart had gone out of his body, so weak and empty of strength did he feel. He had been whipped many times, at school and at Everscombe, but he knew this would be different, and he was half afraid, yet he did not run. Indeed, when Hardwyn took him by the neck of his shirt, he looked up and said quietly, “I am not going to run away.”

“No, I’ll wager you’re not,” Hardwyn answered, and brought the whip stinging down across his back.

Hugh heard his shirt rip in the grasp on his neck, and he felt a foolish concern over it; he saw the loose spears of hay scattered on the dingy floor at his feet; and he wondered why, since he had not meant to struggle, he had twisted up one arm and griped Hardwyn’s wrist that held him. He knew that he was counting the blows, eleven so far, but he durst not open his lips lest in spite of himself he cry out. Were the cuts of the whip bringing blood, he wondered? He did not hear the strokes, but he counted them by feeling; at first each had seemed distinct and left a lingering smart, but now his whole back was wincing and quivering. He heard Hardwyn draw a deep breath and for a second hoped he might stop, but there came another slash of the whip. Then, of a sudden, it was borne in on him that Hardwyn meant to flog him till he cried. Hugh set his teeth tight on his lip and only thought, “I will not, I will not,” and felt the whip-cuts, nothing more, till the floor seemed blurry and came nearer, and his shirt ripped again. Then he heard Saxon’s voice: “Don’t kill the lad, sir.”

“Curse his stubbornness!” Hardwyn panted out, and then there were other blows of which Hugh kept no count. He only knew that at the last he found himself free to reel over against the boards of a stall, and, without glancing at the other men around them, he looked up into Hardwyn’s flushed face a long minute. Then, still keeping hold on the stall, he made a step toward the door, but Hardwyn picked up the saddle and flung it down before him. “Mend that aright now,” he ordered, “and, harkee, if ever you bungle another piece of work like that, I’ll flay you alive.”

Without a word Hugh took up the saddle and tightened the buckle. His fingers shook, he noted, and once, when he put his hand to his mouth, he felt his lip was bleeding where he had bitten it. But he had not cried or spoken, nor would he; when the saddle was put to rights he flung it over its peg, and, still keeping silence, walked out of the stable toward the highway.

So long as he was in sight of the men he walked with tolerable erectness, but he knew it could not last long and he must get away from every one, so he struck across the road into the fields. There he turned eastward on a course that would finally bring him round Shrewsbury to the main highway. For eastward lay the village where he had left Strangwayes; Dick would protect him, he knew, and yet he knew he was not going to him.

As well walk eastward as another way, though, but he ached from head to foot and his back throbbed painfully; so at last, on a bleak hilltop, he sat down to rest, and watched the twilight close in. A little below him he could see the dim roofs of Shrewsbury and the purpling sky above. The western star came out first, and, as the night darkened, many more showed till he lost count of them and turned his eyes to the lights of the town. As he gazed thither he caught, clear and vibrant on the still air, the note of a bell. On the instant the foolish old tale of Dick Whittington came back to him: “Turn again, turn again.” Then he remembered how Lois and he had spoke together the day before he set out from Everscombe; and, when he had hoped for Whittington’s fortune, she had answered that his father would be glad to see him.

Of a sudden Hugh found himself lying face down in the wet grass of the hillside with his fingers digging into the turf. If he were only dead, now while he still possessed some shred of self-respect! He could not go on living, a mere horse-boy, everybody’s drudge, with his highest hope to be some day a swaggering private trooper, and then to be knocked on the head in a petty skirmish. It was so piteously different from the soldierly life he had planned, but he did not ask for that now, only not to be bullied and flogged any more.

Then that mood passed, and he knew only that he was cold in his torn shirt and his back was sore so he was loath to move. But the cold at last forced him to his feet and set him pacing up and down the wet grass; he still loved life enough to exert himself to keep it. Then he began to realize that, after all, he had acted like a child. Was this life so much less endurable than that at Everscombe? Was it worse to earn his living of a gang of brutal troopers than be dependent on grudging relatives? If he did get more blows, a man must not whimper for that, and he was now a man. Neither must a man go crying to his friends; rather the thing that best befitted a gentleman was to accept the life he had taken up and go on bravely.

So, in the early hours of the morning, Hugh Gwyeth faced westward and tramped back to the stables. Reaching there about dawn, he walked in as usual, and taking up a bucket, went to draw water. He had a curious sense of not feeling ashamed nor abashed, as he thought to feel when facing the men once more, but rather proud of himself and of more dignity than ever. He had no hope, however, of being a hero in the sight of the troopers. Some of them chaffed him over his beating and his slinking back again. “You wanted more of the same, did you?” Hardwyn asked dryly, whereat the others laughed. Saxon chaffed him too; but later, when Hugh came to the cottage for breakfast, he asked him roughly if the whip had drawn blood, and then he helped the boy to wash off his hurt back.

By next day every one had forgotten that Hardwyn had flogged him, and life went on in its old course. Only Hugh took it now as an accepted thing; there was no escape, so he would make the best of it, do as he was bidden, dodge what blows he could, and, what he could not dodge, bear without flinching. He even contrived, so long as he could busy himself about the horses, to find a sort of negative pleasure in the life. To groom and feed and water the great, friendly animals did not seem menial, but this made only a part of the day’s routine, and Hugh’s pride could not yet stoop willingly to cleaning boots and fetching beer. The last was the most humiliating employment of all; though he might reconcile himself to slipping into an obscure corner and cleaning the boots of a man who was older than he and a better soldier, he felt that to tramp a quarter-mile on the highway with a brace of jugs and fetch bad beer from an alehouse for a crew of peasant troopers could never befit a gentleman.

Late of an October afternoon he was trudging back to the stable from such an errand, when he met a gay company of horsemen and, to save being trampled on, halted at one side of the road till they should pass. By chance he glanced up and among the riders saw one very young gentleman with yellow curls, who wore a fine blue velvet suit and a big hat, and bestrode a dainty roan mare. Hugh caught his breath and looked again, then dodged headlong back from the road, in behind a cottage out of sight. Halting there a moment he instinctively looked himself over,—ragged shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the shoulders, ragged breeches stained with mud, half-worn boothose, and shoes that were falling to pieces. He wondered if Frank Pleydall, in his fine clothes, on his good horse, had recognized him, and he thought it unlikely. With a foolish dread of a second encounter he made his way back to the stable through the fields; the going was rough, and he now perceived much of the beer had slopped out of the jugs. “I shall be flogged for that,” he told himself, and, with something that was not jealousy but hurt him keenly, he wondered if Frank Pleydall knew what a happy lad he was.

But, much as he expected it, Hugh did not get a flogging; for when he came into the stable yard he found strange horses standing there, and two or three troopers he did not know, and his own acquaintances looked energetic and on good behavior, so much perturbed they did not even rate him about the beer. “The colonel is back from the eastward,” Unger explained, “and Corporal Ridydale is on our shoulders again.”

“He’ll send you packing,” Cowper spoke cheerfully to Hugh.

Just then Saxon, riding in, called to Hugh to groom his well-bespattered horse, so the boy, eager though he was to hear more, must walk away with the beast to the open floor of the stable, where he fell to work. It darkened and lanterns were lit; one was hung from a stanchion, and just beneath Hugh saw a stranger standing, a tall, thickset man of middle age with a heavy beard, who seemed to have an eye for all the business of the stable, and at whose word men moved to obey, even more readily than they did for Hardwyn. He must be John Ridydale, Hugh decided, so he got Saxon’s horse betwixt them, and, working briskly, hoped he might not be noticed. But presently Ridydale stopped giving orders, and Hugh, getting uneasy at his silence and looking sidewise at the man, found he was gazing at him with his brows drawn together. Hugh feigned to be very busy with the horse, but the currycomb moved unsteadily in his hand, while he waited, and wondered if Ridydale would kick him out of the stable at once or let him stay long enough to get his supper. Then he heard a heavy step and, looking up and finding the corporal beside him, drew back a pace warily; but the other griped him by the shoulder with a sharp, “What’s your name, lad?”

“Hugh.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else, sir.”

Hugh had his arm half raised to shield his head, but Ridydale did not strike at him, only said with something strangely like kindliness, “Come outside here.”

There were horses at the trough by the door, Hugh noted, and through the stable yard a twilight mist, in which the cottage lights looked blurry, was shutting down. They had drawn away from any stray troopers, and now, right by the hedge, Ridydale, with his grasp still on Hugh’s shoulder, halted him and asked, “The rest of the name mightn’t be Gwyeth, perhaps, master?”