CHAP. IV.
Food for powder, food for powder; they’ll fill a pit as well
as better: tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.
King Henry IV.
Although Cuthbert Noble was by degrees gaining a little experience in his new and unsuitable calling, yet it must be confessed that a little of his enthusiasm evaporated under the necessary process of being drilled and taught his exercise; and not only so, but he began to be very much puzzled and perplexed at the opinions and the conduct of many with whom he was now to live and to act. The Colonel of the regiment in which he had received his appointment was, indeed, a man eminently worthy of respect and esteem. He was a devout, reserved person, of a noble and grave presence,—an approved soldier, and a sincere and sound patriot. He considered himself to be opposing the crown upon strict constitutional principles; and, being conscientiously attached to the Presbyterian form of church government, desired the overthrow of the prelacy, and the total abolition of episcopacy. Nevertheless, he viewed with distaste and a cold sufferance the extravagant proceedings of the various independent sects now loose upon society; and discouraged, as far as he could, without danger to the one great and common cause, the practices which already obtained in the ranks of the Parliament levies. Every vain and intoxicated fanatic, who had the power of uttering a few dozen unconnected and rambling sentences without book, claimed for his shallow babbling the authority of inspiration, and asserted his gift of speech as a divine commission, by which he was called to the office of a preacher of the word of God. His own religion was serious, practical, intelligible; and he had a sternness of sound judgment, before which all flighty pretensions and false confidences fell down or fled away. His name was Maxwell: he had been a friend of the father of Francis Heywood, and was very well acquainted with Francis. Owing to this circumstance Cuthbert was favourably introduced to him, and was always very considerately treated; but their characters, their ages, and their relative situations in the regiment, made it impossible for them to become intimate with each other. Moreover, the earliest and latest waking thoughts of Colonel Maxwell were wholly taken up with the very important duties of preparing his corps by strict discipline and close training for the day of trial, which could not be very far distant; therefore Cuthbert was left, soon after he joined, to make out as well as he could with the society of the captain of his company and his brother lieutenant. At first, indeed, for a very few days, he had enjoyed the comfort of having Francis Heywood in the same quarters, but the horse had marched down to Northampton, and they were thus separated. Now the captain of Cuthbert’s company had been a master butcher, of the name of Ruddiman, about forty years of age: a fine portly man, standing about six feet three inches in height, with ample chest and broad shoulders, little eyes, red cheeks, a low forehead, and coarse greasy black hair. He had a fist that would fell a bullock, and a voice that would frighten a herd of them. In spite of the very hardening influence of his calling, he had nothing unkind in his temper. He had thrived greatly in his business, was honest and just in all his dealings, a good husband, a good father, and a good citizen—with a house full of children, and a pretty pasture farm in the county of Hertfordshire. He was as bold as he was strong; but was here, nevertheless, solely in obedience to the wishes of an active, ambitious, meddling wife, who was a bitter, censorious, religious politician, and whose pride it was that her husband should be a down-king man, and a captain in the Parliament army. The good captain himself, meanwhile, barring his wife’s sovereign will, and the honour of the title, would much rather have looked after his business at home; or, at all events, have been permitted to join a horse regiment, though only as a sergeant. But Mrs. Ruddiman had decided otherwise, and had told him that, if he only served for a few weeks or months as a captain, and looked well about him, he might get made a commissary and get a contract, and make his fortune. This last consideration was not without its weight; for Master Ruddiman had always a keen eye to the main chance. The brother lieutenant of Cuthbert was a very different sort of personage. He was a thin man, of middle stature, with a pale face and red hair, under thirty years of age. His trade had been that of a dyer: he had rendered conspicuous service at the last election, in securing the return of a Puritan to Parliament, and had been rewarded thus: he was needy, and the pay of his humble rank an object to him. He had great fluency of words, and was a raving Independent of the most virulent order. His name was Elkanah Sippet: he was ignorant, irritable, and vain. He knew a little Latin, with which he was wont to garnish his talk when he wanted to pass off for a scholar, and puzzle big Captain Ruddiman; and he could fill his mouth with Scripture phrases and texts when he wished to impress Cuthbert with a favourable notion of his piety. Ruddiman and Sippet hated each other with about as natural and as cordial a hatred as might consist with their being on the same side in this contest. Neither of them could understand or like poor Cuthbert; but both took refuge from the uneasy contempt with which they regarded each other, by endeavouring to conciliate his good opinion, or rather his preference.
To choose between them was easy: Ruddiman was worth a dozen Sippets in the qualities of his nature; nor was there any thing of the hypocrite in him. He was dull, and slow of comprehension; therefore he seldom suffered himself to speak about religion, but passively knelt and passively listened to the long prayers and longer preachings of the chaplain. He had been so stupified and subdued at home about points of faith and church government by his wife’s brother, a warm and wordy brazier, the godly elder of the congregation to which his wife belonged, that he yielded, partly for the sake of peace, and partly in distrust of his own reason. Thus, in plain fact, he feared God truly for himself, and received the interpretations of Scripture delivered by the clergy, and the lay elders of his sect, with a submission as implicit, and an apprehension as confused, as the Italian peasant listens to the Latin oration of a Franciscan friar. His politics were more simple; and he was in the habit of expressing what he felt about them by always calling the King the man Charles Stuart, and all the principal leaders of the Parliament party right honest and God-fearing worthies. “A man’s a man,” he would say: “I don’t see why any one should be called lord over another; and as for bishops, bless us, why should they live in palaces, and hold forth about taxes in the House of Lords?—Don’t you think that’s wrong, Master Noble, quite wrong? Why it is writ in the Bible that the kingdom of Christ is not of this world.” To this political creed Cuthbert would give assent; but a quick memory whispered to his inner man, “Why then do my servants fight?” As for his brother lieutenant, his tone was always rancorous and unchristian: he was of a mean and narrow mind, without charity and without patience; selfish and tricky, and, withal, quite intent on rising upon the ruin of his betters. He felt a sort of inferiority in the presence of Cuthbert that a little awed him; but his nature would break out occasionally. It was no small advantage to Cuthbert that his two companions had seen him, for a few days, often walking and conversing with Francis Heywood, whose soldierly appearance had attracted general attention among the troops. Moreover, though far indeed from the aptitude desired by Colonel Maxwell, the intelligence of Cuthbert in the field of exercise was greater than that of either Ruddiman or Sippet. Perhaps, after all, the greatest trial of Cuthbert arose from the manners of those with whom he was now compelled, by the distribution of quarters, to live night and day. As officers of the same company, Captain Ruddiman, Sippet, and himself, took their meals together, and he was compelled to occupy a stretcher in the same sleeping chamber with Sippet. Now Ruddiman was a very gross and unclean feeder, and had a most disgusting habit of hawking and spitting on the floor all day long; while Sippet, who secretly indulged in the too frequent use of strong waters, always stunk of spirits, and snored through his nights so loudly, as very seriously to disturb the rest of Cuthbert: nor was it possible, with so irritating an accompaniment, to comfort his wakeful hours with those meditations with which he had often solaced his night watches at Milverton while confined by his wound. However, his spirit, though fretted, did not sink under these annoyances: he rose constantly with the first glimmer of dawn: he did his utmost to perfect himself in all matters of drill and discipline. He gave his best attention to all his instructors, and he performed all his duties with manly cheerfulness, and in the best possible spirit. Colonel Maxwell saw this with silent satisfaction; but he was not a man for lavish praises and sudden intimacies, nor was he without a clear perception that Cuthbert would never make a thorough soldier; indeed his immovable gravity was sometimes very near being altogether conquered by a burst of laughter at the mode in which Cuthbert exhibited the solemn earnestness of his desire to learn his exercises thoroughly, and to command his men properly.
One day, for instance, very soon after Cuthbert’s arrival, as he rode through the different squads of recruits who were learning their facings, he found Cuthbert in one corner of the field, with his head in the air, and a corporal giving him private instructions; and, unperceived by the former, he heard the following strange query:—“Now, my brave man, pray have the goodness to explain to me, very exactly, how it is, that is, upon what principle it is, that, if I place my feet in this extraordinary manner, I shall come to what you call ‘the right about face?’”
“Principle! God save you, master! I know nothing at all about principles; but I know, if you do as I bid you, and put the ball of your right toe to your left heel, and raise the fore part of your feet, and come smartly, heel round, on your two heels, and bring back your right sharply and square with the left, you will come to the right about like a man and a musketeer.”