Fierceheart the Soldier

Front matter

a FIEKCEHEART THE SOLDIEK. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 0 MISTRESS DOROTHY MARVIN, A Romance of the Glorious Revolution. Third Edition. With Illustrations by S. Cowell. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. " The author has succeeded in making his etory intensely interesting. . . . One of the very best adventure stories we bave had for a long time past." — SpeaJcer. "Full of the most thrilling adventures and terrific fights. . . . But through tbe story there runs the thread of as tender and rare a love between man and maid aB the most romantic reader could desire. . . . A story intensely interesting and powerfully exciting. It cannot be put down when once taken up till it has been read from cover to cover." — Church Times. ,c ' Mistress Dorothy Marvin,' most delightful and winsome of women, and one of the freshest and most unhackueyed heroines whose acquaintance we have had the pleasure of making for a very considerable period. . . .

Mr. Snaith has a great gift of observation, and his book is a remarkable picture of thc age it is intended to depict." — World. Fierceheart the Soldier. BY J. C. SNAITH, AUTHOR OP "MISTRESS DOROTHY MARVIN." LONDON: A. D. INNES & CO., BEDFORD STEEET. 1897. CONTENTS. CHAPTER TACE I. In which a Mature Opinion is pronounced ... 1 II. Black resigns ... ... ... ... 15 III. A Summer Morning ... ... ... ... 27 IV. Is concerned with the Conduct of Elderly Gentlemen, as Admirable as it was Peculiar 36 V. The Departure ... ;.. ... ... 49 VI. Leads through Liddesdale to the Seat of War 59 YII. Preston Pans ... ... ... ... 75 VIII. At Pinkie House... ... ... ... 91 IX. Father and Son ... ... ... ... 99 X. Contains another Inspiring Instance of Moral Grandeur ... ... ... ... 110 XI. Provides a Moth-eaten Metaphor, sufficiently Trite to need no Apology; and describes how Cupid's Murderer receives a Message from Home ... ... ... ... 123 XII.

Prepares a Pretty Kettle of Fish ... 137 XIII. In which we are led to examine several Persons whose Hearts exceeded their Understandings ... ... ... ... ... 151 XIV. Flashes a Light on Cupid's Murderer in pursuit of his Ghastly Trade ... ... CONTENTS. CHAPTER TAGE XV. Calls for the Aid of a Little Burgundy ... 170 XVI. Contains an Astounding Revelation ... 182 XVII. To introduce the Deyil ... ... ... 193 XVIII. Makes us Blush for the Heroine ... 203 XIX. Exhibits the Beverend Doctor in a Professional Capacity ... ... ... ... ... 210 XX. The Hero resigns the Sword for the Pen 229 XXI. Involves some straining at the Gnat ... 244 XXII. The swallowing of the Camel ... ... 257 XXIII. Desperate Remedies ... ... ... ... 2C7 XXIV. Young Feerceheart the Soldier laughing at Death... ... ... ... ... 280 XXV.

Chapter I. In Which

A MATURE OPINION IS PRONOONCED. " James," said the Parson, in his thumb-in-the-waistcoat manner, " I think you're an old fool." The General's retort was knight to his fifth ; an onslaught on the sable monarch. They were playing chess, as usual. Nightly they fought with the aid of a bowl, a box of the best high-dried, and a quarrel. They were the finest quarrellers of their time : it was the General's power to say a sour thing sweetly, acid to smile resistance down ; while the Parson rejoiced in a gift of insolence surpassing Johnson. Nightly it was demonstrated whether Cæsar was a greater than the Duke, and whether expedient to bring your rooks out early. The General held a brief for the Duke. He was a Grand Commander of the Bath, and had seen Ramillies. The Parson, a doctor in divinity, bubbling with the classic lore, stood for Cæsar and the ancients.

As for that far more serious matter, the question of the rooks, it was, it seemed, a horrid fallacy of the General's, one so inimical to theory, and so appalling to the Reverend Doctor's conservative intelligence, that at times young Molly was compelled to interfere, and to remind him that his language —well, that his language was embarrassing, and derogatory to his cloth. She liked to do it too ! Ill They sat before drawn curtains in the window-bow, board and men brilliant, their own sparkling faces bathed with eager beauty by the braveries of candle-light and blaze. Outside slept the night, dark, starless, and still, except when the voice of summer breathed a sweet thought to the trees, and for a far soft song of wind on tbe sea. Inside was a sight most cheerly, picked with a sweet cosiness of warmth ; but it had noises : the cat purring and toasting its fur by the hearth, the Parson snarling occasional epithet, the regulated movement of the men, and, above all, a perpetual tune of feet and voices in a chamber above.

Despite it, they maintained a wonderful battle, their nervous bodies poised quaintly over the board ; the General smiling and cool; the Parson betrayed by his hand and an ardent eye. On his brow thunder. "James," he repeated, "I said that I think you're an old fool." " John, you'll pardon me," smiled the enemy, provoked to the tu qiioque, " but if yon sit for the picture of wisdom, Solomon, after all, wasn't such a remarkable man. I win that pawn — see ! " " Tou don't." " I do. A guinea I do." " Psha ! Keep your guineas : lord knows you want 'em for your beautiful son." " My bishop : your pawn — and where are you ? " The Parson's chin sank. He scratched his wig till it snowed flour on the cat's back. " The deuce !— I didn't see that bishop. And I'd defy the devil to play with upstairs in that uproar.

Is hell unchained, sir ? But, James, I may tell you that I still think you're an old fool." The General bowed. The Parson said— ' Bow, my wiseacre ; by all means bow, I like to see you bow. But bowing won't pay that boy's bills, will it ? Bowing won't correct his erroneous courses, will it? Bowing won't sow sense, where sense is not. Though I wouldn't blame him for his poverty of brain ; I pity him. What's bred in the bone, you know, James." " And yet," soothed the General, " he had a man singu larly wise for godpapa." Thus they fought a fierce and strenuous game. Remark the word "fought." Theirs no pretty animosities of play, mind ; no bloodless triumphs ; no swallowing defeat with an amiable grace ; no fulsome compliment, and better luck-next-time politenesses. On the conflict they staked a kingdom of desire : to win was to drink the foaming wine victory ; to lose was to lay vanity bleeding.

Veterans have palates for strong meat ; thus even the recreative food of these two was spiced with spleen. These ancient men made pictures for the mind. Both had long lost the blush of youth ; their pregnant faces, cut and scored with the chisels of adversity, were legible as printed histories of pain endured ; of passions dominant and passions dead ; of blood-bought victories ; of fortune's cruelties supported — very chronicles of strife. They had lived. Major-General Sir James Seton, G.C.B., was known as a dear old gentleman; the handsomest, tenderest, gentlest old gentleman. No woman could resist saluting his name when it fell from her mouth, and his friends caressed his memory. His wife said she would rather reign in his bosom than be Queen of England. Could any daughter of the sex that worships purple power desire a fairer compliment ?

When he marched her down the aisle, the organ pealing, anno 1699, her heart sang to the music of his martial step. To-night, 1745, her fond old heart still trilled to his footfall. The Parson, cynic, bachelor, misogynist, swore that their languishing glances were a daily indecency, very demoralizing to the young. In fact, it was his opinion that if those Whigs had not been in office, and the Government in consequence exceeding weak in the knee, their indiscretions would have been stopped by Act of Parliament many years ago. Small wonder that the offspring of such parents was away post-haste to the deuce. Strange that the Parson should christen this old gentleman "Fierceheart the Soldier." But, then, the Parson had seen him in war. A bit of a beau was the General, his enemies said ; it took his valet an hour to dress him, and then his wig had to be curled over-night.

His wig was an inspiration ; a death-blow to the poor tie and the mean queue ; a full-bottomed marvel ; a perruquier's triumph, sweeping to the shoulders with curves and delicacies poetic yet imperial. It appealed to the eye like a picture : the snowy powder-bloom upon it was great art ; the ensemble dazzling and a thing of genius. Aristocratic Cumberland flourished years in the reflected glory of his wig, for when its wearer once carried it to Saint James's to the king's levee, the Prince of Wales hid his diminished head. The silver buckles of his shoes tarnished those of the French King Louis ; his velvet and his cambric wore a supercilious smile to the coarse English shoddy of neigh bouring gentry ; and, more strange, his snuffbox was the commonest tortoisesheU, a present from the Rev. John Blunt fifty-three summers ago.

It was part of his religion to set it beneath his pillow every night ; and they found in his will a fantastic clause, directing the battered thing to be coffined with its master. Nor did he lack better. There was the famous amber and pearl the Duke put into his hand after he had led the charge of the Thirty-third at Blenheim; one of turquoise from her late majesty Queen Anne, and no fewer than five of singular value from the munificent hand of his friend the King. He was a bit of a fop, his enemies said, and of him it was the worst thing they ever recorded. For himself, he would never admit that he had any enemies. How different with the Rev. John Blunt, D.D., of the University of Oxford, and some time chaplain to the Thirty-third ! He had only one friend ; the whole world else were foes ; himself the most strenuous of all.

Born an organizer, he made a diligent recruit-sergeant to that formidable host, swelling the mighty regiment by en rolling new and vengeful members every day. Where he should propitiate, he insulted ; where he might be merciful, he bullied ; where it was usual to be polite, he did not take the trouble ; for, having at the outset started life with a mean opinion of men, he had never the manners to varnish it. And his person was not pleasing. Six feet four in his boots, with a massy head, a black frowning countenance, and an awful spread of shoulder, he walked abroad with an ogre's air ; and it was not surprising that the mothers of his parish would quell young children by simulation of a tragic face, and a sudden, " Whist ! I hear his reverence." He had the gait of a cart-horse, and a voice like doom ; the conceit of an Englishman ; stu pendous his vanity, his wit ponderous, his pretence absurd.

His austerity was a blight that struck your blood chill, for his smiles worked out to an average of six weekly, with never a one for Sunday. Yet fiat justitia ! he was content to preach the Gospel in business hours alone, always prayed on a full stomach, and considered a square meal a means of grace. Between these gentlemen and Lady Seton had been a domestic Marathon in the matter of Mr. Tom, the joy of his mother, the hope, the despair, the pride of his father, the sermon of his reverend godpapa. That the young gentleman had been seduced into evil courses by the wild town bloods, was known to the world. Then the fine animal was headstrong, and unless the reins were held by the General with a light, tight, intelligent hand, God help him ! " To sea with the high-blooded rogue ! " outspoke the Parson.

" Not while I live," softly said the mother. " The Army, then," pursued the Parson ; " where went his father before him." " Nor that," said the mother. " He's the only one that's left me." And her face was wetted with tears. " The deuce," sighed the General, gently ; and emerging from the nook whither he retired in peace, he kissed away her sorrow, saying, " My dear, never mind old John. It's only his way, you know ; only his way." The poor old mother had need to weep. Two of he? handsome lads had sailed with Vernon to Porto Bello, and bad later perished in that ill-starred attack on Carthagena. And now she had but one. How to mould his career that his proud name might still be his country's honour and a treasure to his King, troubled his mother's dreams ; troubled his father, and his godpapa ; troubled young Molly, who loved the light in his eye.

He sprang from the cream of Britain ; the richest Anglo-Scotian blend was abroad in his arteries ; he had from Sir James the quickest and thickest Northern spirit, mellowed by the cool sweet blood of an unsullied English mother. " 'Tis the breed of your full-chested war-horse," the Parson would cry, tracing the lineage ; " and, my dear madam, if some hot morning you don't find him neighing and snorting death from his haughty nostrils in the dust and gore of the fight, John Blunt's a Dutchman. Tho son of the father, madam ; and you're not to forget that John Blunt's seen that father, a little bit of a dandy man he might put in his pocket — providing he took his wig off — he's seen that undersized little fop one minute cautiously flicking stray grains of rappee from his coat, and the next racing to death at the head of his company, his eyes beaconing fire, and his sword singing and slicinc up Frenchmen.

I'm to forget Ramillies and Blenheim and Malplaquet ere I'll stand by and see a son of James swaddled with the soft heart of woman. And be God ! ma'am, that melancholy man, bis father, is right blithe in the hour of peace to sit chessing in a corner with old John Blunt ; but, do but let 'em rumble the drums and shout, ' French in the bay ! ' and, my dear lady, I fear ye'll weep your eyes waterless, for again will your little tame fop that sits in the chimney soak his sword in gore." Then would the Parson deliver a homily on blood, draping his purple theme with warlike attitude and the eye of Mars. How it reverberated with the Homeric thunders of his own grandiloquence ! His language was a glamour of flowers culled from the mythology ; spoke of Achilles, the son of Peleus, and other persons very alarming to a lady.

Such intellectual splendour, punctuated with scorn and a nose loud blown, silenced every maternal platitude. Poor old lady ! She crept to her General later. " James, why did you marry me ? My fibres are too flaccid for a soldier's wife." " I'm sure I forget," smiled her General ; " you see, it's forty-six years ago. But once you were pretty, I think ; and, besides, my dear, there were some thousands along with your hand. And, darling" — with a bow — "if now you could see your beauty, sure you wouldn't ask me." Her eyes were a mild rebuke, yet she crimsoned to the lover's compliment. Duty and love were tearing her bosom. Every time she gazed on her lad, she saw the soldier leap out of his wonderful eyes — the conquering eyes her husband had wooed with, forty-six years ago. Ay, to the colour, the mild splendour, the swift ripples of light, they were the martial eyes of his noble old father.

Could she forget the young James breasting the hills and the glens in the last years of the dead century, striding to meet her with his head at its highest and flirting his cane, that same soldierly light in the eye ? Oh, her soul thrilled ! Hers not to forget that dauntless youth, trampling timidly down, and plucking rosy love straight out of her breast, and wearing it ever since in his own. And his words, she caught them again—" Darling, the King wants me. I must go." Then he took his sword out and showed her the sparkling steel. "Isn't it beautiful and bright ? " be glowed. But she thought it not so beautiful and bright as her lover's face. He went, though, and presently returned to a wan woman, his coat a lustre of orders, and his name in history. Then she bore him three sons, perfect men, stouter and taller than their father.

And their faces challenged that of their indomitable sire. James and John heard the voice of the King one night, kissed their mother, and then ran to serve him. Their father said that was his proudest day ; while their mother bled within and waxed pale. Next came a night of winter, when their father arrived from a journey out of the snow, with the Gazette in his hand. Anguish tore him. He fell on his knees before her, laying his face in her lap. "Emmy," he moaned, " Oh, forgive me ! I sent them." And here was the third, tbe only one left, with the wine of his sires blessing and cursing his blood. That intolerable Parson man loved to sneer — " Madam, by all means keep pawing Bucephalus mewed to your apron. But one day he scents the fray ; then up go his heels and snap goes your apron. Then who'll pay the devil ?

And it'll be a big bill, you mark me." Duty said, " It is a wickedness to rob the King of his due. Your child was begot for the King ; no nation can spare such." Her heart mocked. " Frail woman, let him go if you can. Bah ! I know you can't. You sent two others, you remember. Where are they ? " Thus was the mother crushed to her knees. Well might fortitude groan. Well might her humiliated soul, too bruised by sorrow to any longer bear a silent pain, wail to her husband aloud, " Am I not weak as water ? When a girl I might have given even him up to the King. But now I am old, my courage has gone out of me. I am too jealous of you and yours. It is all that life has left me. And what I give up I can never regain. I lost two ; never, never, can I win them back. I must keep the third ; I will keep the third.

But I think God must fashion soldiers wives out of tougher flesh than mine." However, the problem of the boy demanded solution. What must be done with the headstrong dog? His keen spirit refused to rust in the country. He packed his valise one night, and coasted hence to London, that oats might, at least, be sowed. He certainly sowed a few : developed some appetite for theatres, the painted lady, wine, and high play. He still yearned for war ; but, at least, the sowing of his oats was some substitute — a poor one, perhaps. Presently bills began to speak ; his full-blooded old father was really easy to bleed — for a time ! Then came a sharp, " You young dog, stop it ! " But, alas ! a hive of bailiffs were now buzzing abroad, and he spent half the day dodging the " jug." Then he took coach back to country innocence.

The fervour of his mother's face was like a knife in the body — he began to wish himself more of a saint. And his cousin — he left her a young, bright beauty, with an eye like a star, that laughed and flashed and clouded seldom ; now every rake in London would have quailed before her. " I don't wish to compete with play-actresses," she said. " I'm a fool ! " cried he. " For which your father pays." " Gad, no ! I pay, Molly ; you make me. I say, though, you're mortal hard on a fellow. Do give me a chance ; I didn't mean " " You didn't mean ! " The dilating of her nostril quelled him. She looked him very steadily down from his wig to his buckles, and then very steadily up from his buckles to his wig. Her quiet face seared into his flesh like a fire, and he staggered shamefully out, his blood smoking in his veins and scorching his miserable skin.

Time took a serious lapse ere he could face her again. In the mean time he committed himself to this aphorism in a letter to his friend, my Lord Dash, " Women are damned funny." Lord Dash admitted its truth. Haply, one Sunday she condescended to walk to church in his company. From the first he half sniffed a purpose ; a suspicion that met with confirmation on arrival. The Rev. John Blunt preached a morning sermon on " The Prodigal Son." A very moving sermon ; his fists moved a whole year's dust out of the pulpit cushions. The lad went out limp, with the eyes of the congregation on him. His every bone was an ache ; but he took his godfather's cudgelling like a man. " Molly," he said, "you told the Doctor I'd be present." " I did," said she. " But how did you know I should go ? I had no in tention, had you not asked me."

" I had merely to ask," she said coolly. Straightway he sought the Parson. He said — " Thank you, sir; it's done me good, I think." Grinned the Parson, "If it hasn't, you shall have another. You young dog, I'll not spare you." Yet, said his reverence to Sir James that night, " James, the young dog can accept a thrashing, which betrays a proper sweetness of blood. Give me the lad that can take a thrashing. James, I believe there's hope for our sinner." For a short month the sinner was a marvel for repent ance; such was his humility of soul, that it proved a source of exasperation to his proud young cousin. She soon prepared him a prick, greeting him with " Good morning, Mr. Meek, you do look genial." And now it was always Mr. Meek, except on Sundays, when it was Mr. Hangdog, since his demeanour was then more painfully penitent than ever, though the sinner's mother rebuked her, and the sinner's father hoped in his mild way that she would let sleeping dogs lie.

"But I can't, you know, uncle," wickedness told him with her chin up; "for this particular dog was never meant for a saint, was he ? And to see him practising Me miserum ! and the downcast eye, is perilously like jesting with a sacred subject, unless " — with a flick at the Parson — " his godpapa intends him for the Church." Causing the reverend misogynist to roll an eye and growl from his ugliest lip — , " Silence, you she-rogue, or I'll kiss you ! " This treatment had its reward in a week. For a youth there is no withstanding the ridicule of girl ; especially if he scorns humility for its own sake, and beholds no blessedness in the lowly heart. Her words instantly pierced to the tenderest spots of so arrogant a bosom, while his proud spirit, by a continuous wincing, soon chafed holes in its coat of restraint.

The sinner, having got his heels cooled and his debts paid, began to yawn behind his hand. The cushions of home had been kinder, and confinement less of a penance, could he have met with unblushing ease the cruel eye of the offended deity. She was too severe, he honestly thought ; yet would have been sorry to have received less punishment. Devil in a girl drew his admiration out ; to be sure, this one had even some to spare, but then it was beautiful to see. The kitten was showing its claw. " She'll make some one a devil of a wife," he commented. " Zounds ! I hope it'll be me." Might he one day be fit to tie her shoe-lace ! The clergyman declared it must be many a weary year ere that befell ; telling him, amongst other things, that it would be as well to take spiritual water and an ethical mop, and begin at once to cleanse his heart and mind of certain foul stains acquired in London.

He meant truly to try ; but the trying was also a great trial of the flesh. The face of that girl with the scorn in it ! Lovely to see, mind, had another provoked it ; only the devil was that there was no forgetting that that face was there especially for himself. Daily beside him, and so consistently afflict ing his eyes when they gazed, that the time arrived when he preferred not to gaze at all. But no evading the mocking lip-curl and the hard laugh with the rasp that sprang from the Hades of anger, and cut into him with the deep, strong bite of steel. He lived in a tingle; the cushions of home were a thorn. Only a wet eyelash of mercy, and he had been down at her feet in his scarlet shame, wallowing in his own unworthiness. But no, he was dirt ; let him get to his dunghill. No reproach, not one word of reproach — but those eyes, that mouth.

Curse play-actresses ! Ye gods ! had he guessed that such deep waters ran under Molly's laugh, he'd have seen the denizens of the Wells and old Drury at the pit, rather than this. But the imperious cannot grovel in the dust beyond a day. There dawned a morning when he ran to his parent, waving a note. " Dad," he cried, " I've been chewing my thumbs nine mortal weeks in this solitude. I can't support it another hour. I am losing flesh, sir ; look at my clothes falling in on me ; besides, I've taken my weight, and it tells me it's twenty-five pounds I've lost. All in nine weeks. Well, you forbid me follow the drums, or go sail the seas ; but here's a line from Dash. I'm off." Upstairs they were packing his bags. From the foot of the stairs — " Mol-ly ! " From the head of them — " Com-ing ! " " Got in all, have you !

Stockings, vests, kerchiefs ruffs, periwigs, breech — shirts, I mean, and linen. Pack the old lady's tic mixture in the top corner, where it won't get broke, and slip her Bible under the bed. Can't find room for that, can I ? And her cork soles for my shoes, the chest protector, and that confounded red knitted wraprascal, stuff 'em up the chimney, will you ? Dash'll die if he sees them." Downstairs, elderly gentlemen evolving move twenty three. The Parson uplifting prayerless eyes at the ceiling — "James, it is hell unchained." " Check," lisps the enemy. " Dang, sir 1 the devil's got the pieces." "Nay, John, merely friend James." White carefully lifted black's knight from the board. " And it is madness ! " The way the Parson's tone leapt at the little word " is," brought it down like a harm less bird, and mangled it with a volume of unharmonious sound, enlarged the laughter-crease at the enemy's lip.

He grinned. "Oh, I agree. Touching a protecting knight when his Majesty's tied helplessly up, is sublimer than madness. It's a palpable suicide." " I didn't mean that," the loser snapped. "Then I beg your pardon, I'm sure." The enemy's face was summer. "James," bellowed the elephant, roused, "you're a man of noble gifts. You've the gift of pig-headedness ; a gift mortal fine in the contumacious porker, but never an ornament to the human male. You've the gift of stupidity, a sign of breed, sir, in the dogmatic ass who's never read his Aristotle, but, again, no embellishment to a man in years. When my sapient friend Jonathan Swift said, ' There's none so blind as they that refuse to see,' he told me, sir, that you provoked him. Were the skies to split, and to burst in flame, and the glorious archangels to hiss out of heaven, you, being unprepared to meet 'em, would shut your eyes and smile, 'Pardon, but really, gentlemen, not seeing you, I'd no idea you were about ! ' " The elephant paused, and fortified his bellicose interior with punch and black rappee.

" He's packing his bags ! " he thundered. " I was not aware " " You were not aware ! Ob, don't, you chimney-keeping old dotard — don't ! " " Don't what ? " " Don't lie. And, James, I'll thank you to keep that dissembling tongue, that smiling lie, that smooth, that glib, that buttered blackguard well within the mouth, sir ; in fact, sir, I'll thank you to permit me the civility of silence. I repeat he's packing his bags ; defiant to me, his godfather, that brought a silver mug to his christen ing. And with your leave, sir, or without your leave, sir — for I'll not sit on ceremony " "No, sir, you prefer to sit on me." " I'll have the boldness to pronounce a mature opinion." Forgive the General yawning. Forgive bluff manners and temerity in that weary old gentleman. By com putation, and the modestest too, the Parson had had the boldness to pronounce his mature opiuion two hundred and thirty-two times in a week. What the General suffered the Reader is spared. ( is )