Chapter Forty Seven.
Old Comrades.
“Well, Dick, for a man who’s just captured a city, you look strangely downhearted—more like as if you’d been captured yourself.”
It was Colonel Robert Kyrle who made the odd observation; he to whom it was addressed being Colonel Sir Richard Walwyn. The time was between midnight and morning, some two hours after Monmouth had succumbed to their strategic coup-de-main; the place Kyrle’s own quarters, whither he had conducted his old comrade-in-arms to give him lodgment for the rest of the night.
Snug quarters they were, in every way well provided. Kyrle was a man of money, and liked good living whether he fought for King or for Parliament. A table was between them, on which were some remains of a supper, with wines of the best, and they were quaffing freely, as might be expected of soldiers after a fight or fatiguing march.
“Yet to you,” added Kyrle, “Massey owes the taking of Monmouth.”
“Rather say to yourself, Kyrle. Give the devil his due,” returned the knight, with a peculiar smile.
Notwithstanding his serious mood at the moment, he could not resist a jest so opportune. He knew it would not offend his old comrade, as it did not. On the contrary, Kyrle seemed rather to relish it, with a light laugh rejoining,—
“Little fear of him you allude to being cheated of his dues this time. No doubt for all that’s been done I’ll get my full share of credit, however little creditable to myself. They’ll call me all sorts of names, the vilest in the Cavalier vocabulary; and, God knows, it’s got a good stock of them. What care I? Not the shaking of straw. My conscience is clear, and my conduct guided by motives I’m not ashamed of—never shall be. You know them, Walwyn?”
“I do, and respect them. I was just in the act of explaining things to Massey up by the Buckstone when your letter came—that carried in the cadger’s wooden leg.”