Hugh Gwyeth: A Roundhead Cavalier

by Beulah Marie Dix

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.”