Woodstock; or, the Cavalier. Вальтер Скотт
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the dog-kennel, if you list," replied Colonel Everard; "but," added he, stepping to the sleeping apartment of Alice, which opened from the parlour, locking it, and taking out the key, "no one shall profane this chamber."
"Had his honour any other commands for the night?"
"None, save to clear the apartment of yonder man. My clerk will remain with me – I have orders which must be written out. – Yet stay – Thou gavest my letter this morning to Mistress Alice?"
"I did."
"Tell me, good Joceline, what she said when she received it?"
"She seemed much concerned, sir; and indeed I think that she wept a little – but indeed she seemed very much distressed."
"And what message did she send to me?"
"None, may it please your honour – She began to say, 'Tell my cousin Everard that I will communicate my uncle's kind purpose to my father, if I can get fitting opportunity – but that I greatly fear' – and there checked herself, as it were, and said, 'I will write to my cousin; and as it may be late ere I have an opportunity of speaking with my father, do thou come for my answer after service.' – So I went to church myself, to while away the time; but when I returned to the Chase, I found this man had summoned my master to surrender, and, right or wrong, I must put him in possession of the Lodge. I would fain have given your honour a hint that the old knight and my young mistress were like to take you on the form, but I could not mend the matter."
"Thou hast done well, good fellow, and I will remember thee. – And now, my masters," he said, advancing to the brace of clerks or secretaries, who had in the meanwhile sate quietly down beside the stone bottle, and made up acquaintance over a glass of its contents – "Let me remind you, that the night wears late."
"There is something cries tinkle, tinkle, in the bottle yet," said Wildrake, in reply.
"Hem! hem! hem!" coughed the Colonel of the Parliament service; and if his lips did not curse his companion's imprudence, I will not answer for what arose in his heart, – "Well!" he said, observing that Wildrake had filled his own glass and Tomkins's, "take that parting glass and begone."
"Would you not be pleased to hear first," said Wildrake, "how this honest gentleman saw the devil to-night look through a pane of yonder window, and how he thinks he had a mighty strong resemblance to your worship's humble slave and varlet scribbler? Would you but hear this, sir, and just sip a glass of this very recommendable strong waters?"
"I will drink none, sir," said Colonel Everard sternly; "and I have to tell you, that you have drunken a glass too much already. – Mr. Tomkins, sir, I wish you good night."
"A word in season at parting," said Tomkins, standing up behind the long leathern back of a chair, hemming and snuffling as if preparing for an exhortation.
"Excuse me, sir," replied Markham Everard sternly; "you are not now sufficiently yourself to guide the devotion of others."
"Woe be to them that reject!" said the Secretary of the Commissioners, stalking out of the room – the rest was lost in shutting the door, or suppressed for fear of offence.
"And now, fool Wildrake, begone to thy bed – yonder it lies," pointing to the knight's apartment.
"What, thou hast secured the lady's for thyself? I saw thee put the key in thy pocket."
"I would not – indeed I could not sleep in that apartment – I can sleep nowhere – but I will watch in this arm-chair. – I have made him place wood for repairing the fire. – Good now, go to bed thyself, and sleep off thy liquor."
"Liquor! – I laugh thee to scorn, Mark – thou art a milksop, and the son of a milksop, and know'st not what a good fellow can do in the way of crushing an honest cup."
"The whole vices of his faction are in this poor fellow individually," said the Colonel to himself, eyeing his protegé askance, as the other retreated into the bedroom, with no very steady pace – "He is reckless, intemperate, dissolute; – and if I cannot get him safely shipped for France, he will certainly be both his own ruin and mine. – Yet, withal, he is kind, brave, and generous, and would have kept the faith with me which he now expects from me; and in what consists the merit of our truth, if we observe not our plighted word when we have promised, to our hurt? I will take the liberty, however, to secure myself against farther interruption on his part."
So saying, he locked the door of communication betwixt the sleeping-room, to which the cavalier had retreated, and the parlour; – and then, after pacing the floor thoughtfully, returned to his seat, trimmed the lamp, and drew out a number of letters. – "I will read these over once more," he said, "that, if possible, the thought of public affairs may expel this keen sense of personal sorrow. Gracious Providence, where is this to end! We have sacrificed the peace of our families, the warmest wishes of our young hearts, to right the country in which we were born, and to free her from oppression; yet it appears, that every step we have made towards liberty, has but brought us in view of new and more terrific perils, as he who travels in a mountainous region, is by every step which elevates him higher, placed in a situation of more imminent hazard."
He read long and attentively, various tedious and embarrassed letters, in which the writers, placing before him the glory of God, and the freedom and liberties of England, as their supreme ends, could not, by all the ambagitory expressions they made use of, prevent the shrewd eye of Markham Everard from seeing, that self-interest and views of ambition, were the principal moving springs at the bottom of their plots.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH
Sleep steals on us even like his brother Death — We know not when it comes – we know it must come — We may affect to scorn and to contemn it, For 'tis the highest pride of human misery To say it knows not of an opiate; Yet the reft parent, the despairing lover, Even the poor wretch who waits for execution, Feels this oblivion, against which he thought His woes had arm'd his senses, steal upon him, And through the fenceless citadel – the body — Surprise that haughty garrison – the mind.
Colonel Everard experienced the truth contained in the verses of the quaint old bard whom we have quoted above. Amid private grief, and anxiety for a country long a prey to civil war, and not likely to fall soon under any fixed or well-established form of government, Everard and his father had, like many others, turned their eyes to General Cromwell, as the person whose valour had made him the darling of the army, whose strong sagacity had hitherto predominated over the high talents by which he had been assailed in Parliament, as well as over his enemies in the field, and who was alone in the situation to settle the nation, as the phrase then went; or, in other words, to dictate the mode of government. The father and son were both reputed to stand high in the General's favour. But Markham Everard was conscious of some particulars, which induced him to doubt whether Cromwell actually, and at heart, bore either to his father or to himself that good-will which was generally believed. He knew him for a profound politician, who could veil for any length of time his real sentiments of men and things, until they could be displayed without prejudice to his interest. And he moreover knew that the General was not likely to forget the opposition which the Presbyterian party had offered to what Oliver called the Great Matter – the trial, namely, and execution of the King. In this opposition, his father and he had anxiously concurred, nor had the arguments, nor even the half-expressed threats of Cromwell, induced them to flinch from that course, far less to permit their names to be introduced into the commission nominated to sit in judgment on that memorable occasion.
This hesitation had occasioned some temporary coldness between the General and the Everards, father and son. But as the latter remained in the army, and bore arms under Cromwell both in Scotland, and finally at Worcester, his services