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Woodstock; or, The Cavalier

S >> Sir Walter Scott >> Woodstock; or, The Cavalier




These considerations strongly recommended to Charles that he should
clear himself of the challenge without fighting; and the reservation
under which he had accepted it, afforded him some opportunity of doing
so.

But Passion also had her arguments, which she addressed to a temper
rendered irritable by recent distress and mortification. In the first
place, if he was a prince, he was also a gentleman, entitled to resent
as such, and obliged to give or claim the satisfaction expected on
occasion of differences among gentlemen. With Englishmen, she urged, he
could never lose interest by showing himself ready, instead of
sheltering himself under his royal birth and pretensions, to come
frankly forward and maintain what he had done or said on his own
responsibility. In a free nation, it seemed as if he would rather gain
than lose in the public estimation by a conduct which could not but seem
gallant and generous. Then a character for courage was far more
necessary to support his pretensions than any other kind of reputation;
and the lying under a challenge, without replying to it, might bring his
spirit into question. What would Villiers and Wilmot say of an intrigue,
in which he had allowed himself to be shamefully baffled by a country
girl, and had failed to revenge himself on his rival? The pasquinades
which they would compose, the witty sarcasms which they would circulate
on the occasion, would be harder to endure than the grave rebukes of
Hertford, Hyde, and Nicholas. This reflection, added to the stings of
youthful and awakened courage, at length fixed his resolution, and he
returned to Woodstock determined to keep his appointment, come of it
what might.

Perhaps there mingled with his resolution a secret belief that such a
rencontre would not prove fatal. He was in the flower of his youth,
active in all his exercises, and no way inferior to Colonel Everard, as
far as the morning's experiment had gone, in that of self-defence. At
least, such recollection might pass through his royal mind, as he hummed
to himself a well-known ditty, which he had picked up during his
residence in Scotland--

"A man may drink and not be drunk;
A man may fight and not be slain;
A man may kiss a bonnie lass,
And yet be welcome back again."

Meanwhile the busy and all-directing Dr. Rochecliffe had contrived to
intimate to Alice that she must give him a private audience, and she
found him by appointment in what was called the study, once filled with
ancient books, which, long since converted into cartridges, had made
more noise in the world at their final exit, than during the space which
had intervened betwixt that and their first publication. The Doctor
seated himself in a high-backed leathern easy-chair, and signed to Alice
to fetch a stool and sit down beside him.

"Alice," said the old man, taking her hand affectionately, "thou art a
good girl, a wise girl, a virtuous girl, one of those whose price is
above rubies--not that _rubies_ is the proper translation--but remind me
to tell you of that another time. Alice, thou knowest who this Louis
Kerneguy is--nay, hesitate not to me--I know every thing--I am well
aware of the whole matter. Thou knowest this honoured house holds the
Fortunes of England." Alice was about to answer. "Nay, speak not, but
listen to me, Alice--How does he bear himself towards you?"

Alice coloured with the deepest crimson. "I am a country-bred girl," she
said, "and his manners are too courtlike for me."

"Enough said--I know it all. Alice, he is exposed to a great danger
to-morrow, and you must be the happy means to prevent him."

"I prevent him!--how, and in what manner?" said Alice, in surprise. "It
is my duty, as a subject, to do anything--anything that may become my
father's daughter"--

Here she stopped, considerably embarrassed.

"Yes," continued the Doctor, "to-morrow he hath made an appointment--an
appointment with Markham Everard; the hour and place are set--six in the
morning, by the King's Oak. If they meet, one will probably fall."

"Now, may God forefend they should meet," said Alice, turning as
suddenly pale as she had previously reddened. "But harm cannot come of
it; Everard will never lift his sword against the King."

"For that," said Dr. Rochecliffe, "I would not warrant. But if that
unhappy young gentleman shall have still some reserve of the loyalty
which his general conduct entirely disavows, it would not serve us here;
for he knows not the King, but considers him merely as a cavalier, from
whom he has received injury."

"Let him know the truth, Doctor Rochecliffe, let him know it instantly,"
said Alice; "_he_ lift hand against the King, a fugitive and
defenceless! He is incapable of it. My life on the issue, he becomes
most active in his preservation."

"That is the thought of a maiden, Alice," answered the Doctor; "and, as
I fear, of a maiden whose wisdom is misled by her affections. It were
worse than treason to admit a rebel officer, the friend of the
arch-traitor Cromwell, into so great a secret. I dare not answer for
such rashness. Hammond was trusted by his father, and you know what came
of it."

"Then let my father know. He will meet Markham, or send to him,
representing the indignity done to him by attacking his guest."

"We dare not let your father into the secret who Louis Kerneguy really
is. I did but hint the possibility of Charles taking refuge at
Woodstock, and the rapture into which Sir Henry broke out, the
preparations for accommodation and the defence which he began to talk
of, plainly showed that the mere enthusiasm of his loyalty would have
led to a risk of discovery. It is you, Alice, who must save the hopes of
every true royalist."

"I!" answered Alice; "it is impossible.--Why cannot my father be induced
to interfere, as in behalf of his friend and guest, though he know him
as no other than Louis Kerneguy?"

"You have forgot your father's character, my young friend," said the
Doctor; "an excellent man, and the best of Christians, till there is a
clashing of swords, and then he starts up the complete martialist, as
deaf to every pacific reasoning as if he were a game-cock."

"You forget, Doctor Rochecliffe," said Alice, "that this very morning,
if I understand the thing aright, my father prevented them from
fighting."

"Ay," answered the Doctor, "because he deemed himself bound to keep the
peace in the Royal-Park; but it was done with such regret, Alice, that,
should he find them at it again, I am clear to foretell he will only so
far postpone the combat as to conduct them to some unprivileged ground,
and there bid them tilt and welcome, while he regaled his eyes with a
scene so pleasing. No, Alice, it is you, and you only, who can help us
in this extremity."

"I see no possibility," said she, again colouring, "how I can be of the
least use."

"You must send a note," answered Dr. Rochecliffe, "to the King--a note
such as all women know how to write better than any man can teach
them--to meet you at the precise hour of the rendezvous. He will not
fail you, for I know his unhappy foible."

"Doctor Rochecliffe," said Alice gravely,--"you have known me from
infancy,--What have you seen in me to induce you to believe that I
should ever follow such unbecoming counsel?"

"And if you have known _me_ from infancy," retorted the Doctor, "what
have you seen of _me_ that you should suspect me of giving counsel to my
friend's daughter, which it would be misbecoming in her to follow? You
cannot be fool enough, I think, to suppose, that I mean you should carry
your complaisance farther than to keep him in discourse for an hour or
two, till I have all in readiness for his leaving this place, from which
I can frighten him by the terrors of an alleged search?--So, C. S.
mounts his horse and rides off, and Mistress Alice Lee has the honour of
saving him."

"Yes, at the expense of my own reputation," said Alice, "and the risk of
an eternal stain on my family. You say you know all. What can the King
think of my appointing an assignation with him after what has passed,
and how will it be possible to disabuse him respecting the purpose of my
doing so?"

"I will disabuse him, Alice; I will explain the whole."

"Doctor Rochecliffe," said Alice, "you propose what is impossible. You
can do much by your ready wit and great wisdom; but if new-fallen snow
were once sullied, not all your art could wash it clean again; and it is
altogether the same with a maiden's reputation."

"Alice, my dearest child," said the Doctor, "bethink you that if I
recommended this means of saving the life of the King, at least rescuing
him from instant peril, it is because I see no other of which to avail
myself. If I bid you assume, even for a moment, the semblance of what is
wrong, it is but in the last extremity, and under circumstances which
cannot return--I will take the surest means to prevent all evil report
which can arise from what I recommend."

"Say not so, Doctor," said Alice; "better undertake to turn back the
Isis than to stop the course of calumny. The King will make boast to his
whole licentious court, of the ease with which, but for a sudden alarm,
he could have brought off Alice Lee as a paramour--the mouth which
confers honour on others, will then be the means to deprive me of mine.
Take a fitter course, one more becoming your own character and
profession. Do not lead him to fail in an engagement of honour, by
holding out the prospect of another engagement equally dishonourable,
whether false or true. Go to the King himself, speak to him, as the
servants of God have a right to speak, even to earthly sovereigns. Point
out to him the folly and the wickedness of the course he is about to
pursue--urge upon him, that he fear the sword, since wrath bringeth the
punishment of the sword. Tell him, that the friends who died for him in
the field at Worcester, on the scaffolds, and on the gibbets, since that
bloody day--that the remnant who are in prison, scattered, fled, and
ruined on his account, deserve better of him and his father's race, than
that he should throw away his life in an idle brawl--Tell him, that it
is dishonest to venture that which is not his own, dishonourable to
betray the trust which brave men have reposed in his virtue and in his
courage."

Dr. Rochecliffe looked on her with a melancholy smile, his eyes
glistening as he said, "Alas! Alice, even I could not plead that just
cause to him so eloquently or so impressively as thou dost. But, alack!
Charles would listen to neither. It is not from priests or women, he
would say, that men should receive counsel in affairs of honour."

"Then, hear me, Doctor Rochecliffe--I will appear at the place of
rendezvous, and I will prevent the combat--do not fear that I can do
what I say--at a sacrifice, indeed, but not that of my reputation. My
heart may be broken"--she endeavoured to stifle her sobs with
difficulty--"for the consequence; but not in the imagination of a man,
and far less that man her sovereign, shall a thought of Alice Lee be
associated with dishonour." She hid her face in her handkerchief, and
burst out into unrestrained tears.

"What means this hysterical passion?" said Dr. Rochecliffe, surprised
and somewhat alarmed by the vehemence of her grief--"Maiden, I must have
no concealments; I must know."

"Exert your ingenuity, then, and discover it," said Alice--for a moment
put out of temper at the Doctor's pertinacious self-importance--"Guess
my purpose, as you can guess at every thing else. It is enough to have
to go through my task, I will not endure the distress of telling it
over, and that to one who--forgive me, dear Doctor--might not think my
agitation on this occasion fully warranted."

"Nay, then, my young mistress, you must be ruled," said Rochecliffe;
"and if I cannot make you explain yourself, I must see whether your
father can gain so far on you." So saying, he arose somewhat displeased,
and walked towards the door.

"You forget what you yourself told me, Doctor Rochecliffe," said Alice,
"of the risk of communicating this great secret to my father."

"It is too true," he said, stopping short and turning round; "and I
think, wench, thou art too smart for me, and I have not met many such.
But thou art a good girl, and wilt tell me thy device of free-will--it
concerns my character and influence with the King, that I should be
fully acquainted with whatever is _actum atque tractatum_, done and
treated of in this matter."

"Trust your character to me, good Doctor," said Alice, attempting to
smile; "it is of firmer stuff than those of women, and will be safer in
my custody than mine could have been in yours. And thus much I
condescend--you shall see the whole scene--you shall go with me
yourself, and much will I feel emboldened and heartened by your
company."

"That is something," said the Doctor, though not altogether satisfied
with this limited confidence. "Thou wert ever a clever wench, and I will
trust thee; indeed, trust thee I find I must, whether voluntarily or
no."

"Meet me, then," said Alice, "in the wilderness to-morrow. But first
tell me, are you well assured of time and place?--a mistake were fatal."

"Assure yourself my information is entirely accurate," said the Doctor,
resuming his air of consequence, which had been a little diminished
during the latter part of their conference.

"May I ask," said Alice, "through what channel you acquired such
important information?"

"You may ask, unquestionably," he answered, now completely restored to
his supremacy; "but whether I will answer or not, is a very different
question. I conceive neither your reputation nor my own is interested in
your remaining in ignorance on that subject. So I have my secrets as
well as you, mistress; and some of them, I fancy, are a good deal more
worth knowing."

"Be it so," said Alice, quietly; "if you will meet me in the wilderness
by the broken dial at half-past five exactly, we will go together
to-morrow, and watch them as they come to the rendezvous. I will on the
way get the better of my present timidity, and explain to you the means
I design to employ to prevent mischief. You can perhaps think of making
some effort which may render my interference, unbecoming and painful as
it must be, altogether unnecessary."

"Nay, my child," said the Doctor, "if you place yourself in my hands,
you will be the first that ever had reason to complain of my want of
conduct, and you may well judge you are the very last (one excepted)
whom I would see suffer for want of counsel. At half-past five, then, at
the dial in the wilderness--and God bless our undertaking!"

Here their interview was interrupted by the sonorous voice of Sir Henry
Lee, which shouted their names, "Daughter Alice--Doctor Rochecliffe,"
through passage and gallery.

"What do you here," said he, entering, "sitting like two crows in a
mist, when we have such rare sport below? Here is this wild
crack-brained boy Louis Kerneguy, now making me laugh till my sides are
fit to split, and now playing on his guitar sweetly enough to win a lark
from the heavens.--Come away with you, come away. It is hard work to
laugh alone."

* * * * *

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-EIGHTH.


This is the place, the centre of the grove;
Here stands the oak, the monarch of the wood.
JOHN HOME.

The sun had risen on the broad boughs of the forest, but without the
power of penetrating into its recesses, which hung rich with heavy
dewdrops, and were beginning on some of the trees to exhibit the varied
tints of autumn; it being the season when Nature, like a prodigal whose
race is well-nigh run, seems desirous to make up in profuse gaiety and
variety of colours, for the short space which her splendour has then to
endure. The birds were silent--and even Robin-redbreast, whose
chirruping song was heard among the bushes near the Lodge, emboldened by
the largesses with which the good old knight always encouraged his
familiarity, did not venture into the recesses of the wood, where he
encountered the sparrow-hawk, and other enemies of a similar
description, preferring the vicinity of the dwellings of man, from whom
he, almost solely among the feathered tribes, seems to experience
disinterested protection.

The scene was therefore at once lovely and silent, when the good Dr.
Rochecliffe, wrapped in a scarlet roquelaure, which had seen service in
its day, muffling his face more from habit than necessity, and
supporting Alice on his arm, (she also defended by a cloak against the
cold and damp of the autumn morning,) glided through the tangled and
long grass of the darkest alleys, almost ankle-deep in dew, towards the
place appointed for the intended duel. Both so eagerly maintained the
consultation in which they were engaged, that they were alike insensible
of the roughness and discomforts of the road, though often obliged to
force their way through brushwood and coppice, which poured down on them
all the liquid pearls with which they were loaded, till the mantles they
were wrapped in hung lank by their sides, and clung to their shoulders
heavily charged with moisture. They stopped when they had attained a
station under the coppice, and shrouded by it, from which they could see
all that passed on the little esplanade before the King's Oak, whose
broad and scathed form, contorted and shattered limbs, and frowning
brows, made it appear like some ancient war-worn champion, well selected
to be the umpire of a field of single combat.

The first person who appeared at the rendezvous was the gay cavalier
Roger Wildrake. He also was wrapped in his cloak, but had discarded his
puritanic beaver, and wore in its stead a Spanish hat, with a feather
and gilt hatband, all of which had encountered bad weather and hard
service; but to make amends for the appearance of poverty by the show of
pretension, the castor was accurately adjusted after what was rather
profanely called the d--me cut, used among the more desperate cavaliers.
He advanced hastily, and exclaimed aloud--"First in the field after all,
by Jove, though I bilked Everard in order to have my morning draught.--
It has done me much good," he added, smacking his lips.--"Well, I
suppose I should search the ground ere my principal comes up, whose
Presbyterian watch trudges as slow as his Presbyterian step."

He took his rapier from under his cloak, and seemed about to search the
thickets around.

"I will prevent him," whispered the Doctor to Alice. "I will keep faith
with you--you shall not come on the scene--_nisi dignus vindice nodus_--
I'll explain that another time. _Vindex_ is feminine as well as
masculine, so the quotation is defensible.--Keep you close."

So saying, he stepped forward on the esplanade, and bowed to Wildrake.

"Master Louis Kerneguy," said Wildrake, pulling off his hat; but
instantly discovering his error, he added, "But no--I beg your pardon,
sir--Fatter, shorter, older.--Mr. Kerneguy's friend, I suppose, with
whom I hope to have a turn by and by.--And why not now, sir, before our
principals come up? Just a snack to stay the orifice of the stomach,
till the dinner is served, sir? What say you?"

"To open the orifice of the stomach more likely, or to give it a new
one," said the Doctor.

"True, sir," said Roger, who seemed now in his element; "you say
well--that is as thereafter may be.--But come, sir, you wear your face
muffled. I grant you, it is honest men's fashion at this unhappy time;
the more is the pity. But we do all above board--we have no traitors
here. I'll get into my gears first, to encourage you, and show you that
you have to deal with a gentleman, who honours the King, and is a match
fit to fight with any who follow him, as doubtless you do, sir, since
you are the friend of Master Louis Kerneguy."

All this while, Wildrake was busied undoing the clasps of his
square-caped cloak.

"Off--off, ye lendings," he said, "borrowings I should more properly
call you--"

So saying, he threw the cloak from him, and appeared in cuerpo, in a
most cavalier-like doublet, of greasy crimson satin, pinked and slashed
with what had been once white tiffany; breeches of the same; and
nether-stocks, or, as we now call them, stockings, darned in many
places, and which, like those of Poins, had been once peach-coloured. A
pair of pumps, ill calculated for a walk through the dew, and a broad
shoulderbelt of tarnished embroidery, completed his equipment.

"Come, sir!" he exclaimed; "make haste, off with your slough--Here I
stand tight and true--as loyal a lad as ever stuck rapier through a
roundhead.--Come, sir, to your tools!" he continued; "we may have
half-a-dozen thrusts before they come yet, and shame them for their
tardiness.--Pshaw!" he exclaimed, in a most disappointed tone, when the
Doctor, unfolding his cloak, showed his clerical dress; "Tush! it's but
the parson after all!"

Wildrake's respect for the Church, however, and his desire to remove one
who might possibly interrupt a scene to which he looked forward with
peculiar satisfaction, induced him presently to assume another tone.

"I beg pardon," he said, "my dear Doctor--I kiss the hem of your
cassock--I do, by the thundering Jove--I beg your pardon again.--But I
am happy I have met with you--They are raving for your presence at the
Lodge--to marry, or christen, or bury, or confess, or something very
urgent.--For Heaven's sake, make haste!"

"At the Lodge?" said the Doctor; "why, I left the Lodge this instant--I
was there later, I am sure, than you could be, who came the Woodstock
road."

"Well," replied Wildrake, "it is at Woodstock they want you.--Rat it,
did I say the Lodge?--No, no--Woodstock--Mine host cannot be hanged--his
daughter married--his bastard christened, or his wife buried--without
the assistance of a _real_ clergyman--Your Holdenoughs won't do for
them.--He's a true man mine host; so, as you value your function, make
haste."

"You will pardon me, Master Wildrake," said the Doctor--"I wait for
Master Louis Kerneguy."

"The devil you do!" exclaimed Wildrake. "Why, I always knew the Scots
could do nothing without their minister; but d--n it, I never thought
they put them to this use neither. But I have known jolly customers in
orders, who understood how to handle the sword as well as their
prayer-book. You know the purpose of our meeting, Doctor. Do you come
only as a ghostly comforter--or as a surgeon, perhaps--or do you ever
take bilboa in hand?--Sa--sa!"

Here he made a fencing demonstration with his sheathed rapier.

"I have done so, sir, on necessary occasion," said Dr. Rochecliffe.

"Good sir, let this stand for a necessary one," said Wildrake. "You know
my devotion for the Church. If a divine of your skill would do me the
honour to exchange but three passes with me, I should think myself happy
for ever."

"Sir," said Rochecliffe, smiling, "were there no other objection to what
you propose, I have not the means--I have no weapon."

"What? you want the _de quoi_? that is unlucky indeed. But you have a
stout cane in your hand--what hinders our trying a pass (my rapier being
sheathed of course) until our principals come up? My pumps are full of
this frost-dew; and I shall be a toe or two out of pocket, if I am to
stand still all the time they are stretching themselves; for, I fancy,
Doctor, you are of my opinion, that the matter will not be a fight of
cock-sparrows."

"My business here is to make it, if possible, be no fight at all," said
the divine.

"Now, rat me, Doctor, but that is too spiteful," said Wildrake; "and
were it not for my respect for the Church, I could turn Presbyterian, to
be revenged."

"Stand back a little, if you please, sir," said the Doctor; "do not
press forward in that direction."--For Wildrake, in the agitation of his
movements, induced by his disappointment, approached the spot where
Alice remained still concealed.

"And wherefore not, I pray you, Doctor?" said the cavalier.

But on advancing a step, he suddenly stopped short, and muttered to
himself, with a round oath of astonishment, "A petticoat in the coppice,
by all that is reverend, and at this hour in the morning--
_Whew--ew--ew_!"--He gave vent to his surprise in a long low
interjectional whistle; then turning to the Doctor, with his finger on
the side of his nose, "You're sly, Doctor, d--d sly! But why not give me
a hint of your--your commodity there--your contraband goods? Gad, sir, I
am not a man to expose the eccentricities of the Church."

"Sir," said Dr. Rochecliffe, "you are impertinent; and if time served,
and it were worth my while, I would chastise you."

And the Doctor, who had served long enough in the wars to have added
some of the qualities of a captain of horse to those of a divine,
actually raised his cane, to the infinite delight of the rake, whose
respect for the Church was by no means able to subdue his love of
mischief.

"Nay, Doctor," said he, "if you wield your weapon broadsword-fashion, in
that way, and raise it as high as your head, I shall be through you in a
twinkling." So saying, he made a pass with his sheathed rapier, not
precisely at the Doctor's person, but in that direction; when
Rochecliffe, changing the direction of his cane from the broadsword
guard to that of the rapier, made the cavalier's sword spring ten yards
out of his hand, with all the dexterity of my friend Francalanza. At
this moment both the principal parties appeared on the field.

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