Woodstock or The Cavalier Part 7

CHAPTER THE FIFTH.

My tongue pads slowly under this new language, And starts and stumbles at these uncouth phrases.

They may be great in worth and weight, but hang Upon the native glibness of my language Like Saul's plate-armour on the shepherd boy, Enc.u.mbering and not arming him.

J. B.

As Markham Everard pursued his way towards the Lodge, through one of the long sweeping glades which traversed the forest, varying in breadth, till the trees were now so close that the boughs made darkness over his head, then receding farther to let in glimpses of the moon, and anon opening yet wider into little meadows, or savannahs, on which the moonbeams lay in silvery silence; as he thus proceeded on his lonely course, the various effects produced by that delicious light on the oaks, whose dark leaves, gnarled branches, and ma.s.sive trunks it gilded, more or less partially, might have drawn the attention of a poet or a painter.

But if Everard thought of anything saving the painful scene in which he had just played his part, and of which the result seemed the destruction of all his hopes, it was of the necessary guard to be observed in his night-walk. The times were dangerous and unsettled; the roads full of disbanded soldiers, and especially of royalists, who made their political opinions a pretext for disturbing the country with marauding parties and robberies. Deer-stealers also, who are ever a desperate banditti, had of late infested Woodstock Chase. In short, the dangers of the place and period were such, that Markham Everard wore his loaded pistols at his belt, and carried his drawn sword under his arm, that he might be prepared for whatever peril should cross his path.

He heard the bells of Woodstock Church ring curfew, just as he was crossing one of the little meadows we have described, and they ceased as he entered an overshadowed and twilight part of the path beyond. It was there that he heard some one whistling; and, as the sound became clearer, it was plain the person was advancing towards him. This could hardly be a friend; for the party to which he belonged rejected, generally speaking, all music, unless psalmody. "If a man is merry, let him sing psalms," was a text which they were pleased to interpret as literally and to as little purpose as they did some others; yet it was too continued a sound to be a signal amongst night-walkers, and too light and cheerful to argue any purpose of concealment on the part of the traveller, who presently exchanged his whistling for singing, and trolled forth the following stanza to a jolly tune, with which the old cavaliers were wont to wake the night owl:

Hey for cavaliers! Ho for cavaliers!

Pray for cavaliers!

Rub a dub-rub a dub!

Have at old Beelzebub- Oliver smokes for fear.

"I should know that voice," said Everard, unc.o.c.king the pistol which he had drawn from his belt, but continuing to hold it in his hand. Then came another fragment:

Hash them-slash them- All to pieces dash them.

"So ho!" cried Markham, "who goes there, and for whom?"

"For Church and King," answered a voice, which presently added, "No, d-n me-I mean against Church and King, and for the people that are uppermost-I forget which they are."

"Roger Wildrake, as I guess?" said Everard.

"The same-Gentleman; of Squattlesea-mere, in the moist county of Lincoln."

"Wildrake!" said Markham-"Wildgoose you should be called. You have been moistening your own throat to some purpose, and using it to gabble tunes very suitable to the times, to be sure!"

"Faith, the tune's a pretty tune enough, Mark, only out of fashion a little-the more's the pity."

"What could I expect," said Everard, "but to meet some ranting, drunken cavalier, as desperate and dangerous as night and sack usually make them? What if I had rewarded your melody by a ball in the gullet?"

"Why, there would have been a piper paid-that's all," said Wildrake. "But wherefore come you this way now? I was about to seek you at the hut."

"I have been obliged to leave it-I will tell you the cause hereafter," replied Markham.

"What! the old play-hunting cavalier was cross, or Chloe was unkind?"

"Jest not, Wildrake-it is all over with me," said Everard.

"The devil it is," exclaimed Wildrake, "and you take it thus quietly!- Zounds! let us back together-I'll plead your cause for you-I know how to tickle up an old knight and a pretty maiden-Let me alone for putting you rectus in curia, you canting rogue.-D-n me, Sir Henry Lee, says I, your nephew is a piece of a Puritan-it won't deny-but I'll uphold him a gentleman and a pretty fellow, for all that.-Madam, says I, you may think your cousin looks like a psalm-singing weaver, in that bare felt, and with that rascally brown cloak; that band, which looks like a baby's clout, and those loose boots, which have a whole calf-skin in each of them,-but let him wear on the one side of his head a castor, with a plume befitting his quality; give him a good Toledo by his side, with a broidered belt and an inlaid hilt, instead of the ton of iron contained in that basket-hilted black Andrew Ferrara; put a few smart words in his mouth-and, blood and wounds! madam, says I-"

"Prithee, truce with this nonsense, Wildrake," said Everard, "and tell me if you are sober enough to hear a few words of sober reason?"

"Pshaw! man, I did but crack a brace of quarts with yonder puritanic, roundheaded soldiers, up yonder at the town; and rat me but I pa.s.sed myself for the best man of the party; tw.a.n.ged my nose, and turned up my eyes, as I took my can-Pah! the very wine tasted of hypocrisy. I think the rogue corporal smoked something at last-as for the common fellows, never stir, but they asked me to say grace over another quart."

"This is just what I wished to speak with you about, Wildrake," said Markham-"You hold me, I am sure, for your friend?"

"True as steel.-Chums at College and at Lincoln's Inn-we have been Nisus and Euryalus, Theseus and Pirithous, Orestes and Pylades; and, to sum up the whole with a puritanic touch, David and Jonathan, all in one breath. Not even politics, the wedge that rends families and friendships asunder, as iron rives oak, have been able to split us."

"True," answered Markham: "and when you followed the King to Nottingham, and I enrolled under Ess.e.x, we swore, at our parting, that whichever side was victorious, he of us who adhered to it, should protect his less fortunate comrade."

"Surely, man, surely; and have you not protected me accordingly? Did you not save me from hanging? and am I not indebted to you for the bread I eat?"

"I have but done that which, had the times been otherwise, you, my dear Wildrake, would, I am sure, have done for me. But, as I said, that is just what I wished to speak to you about. Why render the task of protecting you more difficult than it must necessarily be at any rate? Why thrust thyself into the company of soldiers, or such like, where thou art sure to be warmed into betraying thyself? Why come hollowing and whooping out cavalier ditties, like a drunken trooper of Prince Rupert, or one of Wilmot's swaggering body-guards?"

"Because I may have been both one and t'other in my day, for aught that you know," replied Wildrake. "But, oddsfish! is it necessary I should always be reminding you, that our obligation of mutual protection, our league of offensive and defensive, as I may call it, was to be carried into effect without reference to the politics or religion of the party protected, or the least obligation on him to conform to those of his friend?"

"True," said Everard; "but with this most necessary qualification, that the party should submit to such outward conformity to the times as should make it more easy and safe for his friend to be of service to him. Now, you are perpetually breaking forth, to the hazard of your own safety and my credit."

"I tell you, Mark, and I would tell your namesake the apostle, that you are hard on me. You have practised sobriety and hypocrisy from your hanging sleeves till your Geneva ca.s.sock-from the cradle to this day,-and it is a thing of nature to you; and you are surprised that a rough, rattling, honest fellow, accustomed to speak truth all his life, and especially when he found it at the bottom of a flask, cannot be so perfect a prig as thyself-Zooks! there is no equality betwixt us-A trained diver might as well, because he can retain his breath for ten minutes without inconvenience, upbraid a poor devil for being like to burst in twenty seconds, at the bottom of ten fathoms water-And, after all, considering the guise is so new to me, I think I bear myself indifferently well-try me!"

"Are there any more news from Worcester fight?" asked Everard, in a tone so serious that it imposed on his companion, who replied in his genuine character-

"Worse!-d-n me, worse an hundred times than reported-totally broken. Noll hath certainly sold himself to the devil, and his lease will have an end one day-that is all our present comfort."

"What! and would this be your answer to the first red-coat who asked the question?" said Everard. "Methinks you would find a speedy pa.s.sport to the next corps de garde."

"Nay, nay," answered Wildrake, "I thought you asked me in your own person.-Lack-a-day! a great mercy-a glorifying mercy-a crowning mercy-a vouchsafing-an uplifting-I profess the malignants are scattered from Dan to Beersheba-smitten, hip and thigh, even until the going down of the sun!"

"Hear you aught of Colonel Thornhaugh's wounds?"

"He is dead," answered Wildrake, "that's one comfort-the roundheaded rascal!-Nay, hold! it was but a trip of the tongue-I meant, the sweet G.o.dly youth."

"And hear you aught of the young man, King of Scotland, as they call him?" said Everard.

"Nothing but that he is hunted like a partridge on the mountains. May G.o.d deliver him, and confound his enemies!-Zoons, Mark Everard, I can fool it no longer. Do you not remember, that at the Lincoln's-Inn gambols-though you did not mingle much in them, I think-I used always to play as well as any of them when it came to the action, but they could never get me to rehea.r.s.e conformably. It's the same at this day. I hear your voice, and I answer to it in the true tone of my heart; but when I am in the company of your snuffling friends, you have seen me act my part indifferent well."

"But indifferent, indeed," replied Everard; "however, there is little call on you to do aught, save to be modest and silent. Speak little, and lay aside, if you can, your big oaths and swaggering looks-set your hat even on your brows."

"Ay, that is the curse! I have been always noted for the jaunty manner in which I wear my castor-Hard when a man's merits become his enemies!"

"You must remember you are my clerk."

"Secretary," answered Wildrake: "let it be secretary, if you love me."

"It must be clerk, and nothing else-plain clerk-and remember to be civil and obedient," replied Everard.

"But you should not lay on your commands with so much ostentatious superiority, Master Markham Everard. Remember, I am your senior of three years' standing. Confound me, if I know how to take it!"

"Was ever such a fantastic wrong-head!-For my sake, if not for thine own, bend thy freakish folly to listen to reason. Think that I have incurred both risk and shame on thy account."

"Nay, thou art a right good fellow, Mark," replied the cavalier; "and for thy sake I will do much-but remember to cough, and cry hem! when thou seest me like to break bounds. And now, tell me whither we are bound for the night."

"To Woodstock Lodge, to look after my uncle's property," answered Markham Everard: "I am informed that soldiers have taken possession-Yet how could that be if thou foundest the party drinking in Woodstock?"

"There was a kind of commissary or steward, or some such rogue, had gone down to the Lodge," replied Wildrake; "I had a peep at him."

"Indeed!" replied Everard.

"Ay, verily," said Wildrake, "to speak your own language. Why, as I pa.s.sed through the park in quest of you, scarce half an hour since, I saw a light in the Lodge-Step this way, you will see it yourself."