Woodstock (Unabridged). Walter Scott
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this bold purpose, but half afraid to execute it, Wildrake lay by for an opportunity of making the attempt, while Cromwell was apparently unable to express his own meaning. He was already beginning a third panegyric upon Colonel Everard, with sundry varied expressions of his own wish to oblige him, when Wildrake took the opportunity to strike in, on the General’s making one of his oratorical pauses.
“So please you” he said bluntly, “your worship has already spoken on two topics of your discourse, your own worthiness, and that of my master, Colonel Everard. But, to enable me to do mine errand, it would be necessary to bestow a few words on the third head.”
“The third?” said Cromwell.
“Ay,” said Wildrake, “which, in your honour’s subdivision of your discourse, touched on my unworthy self. What am I to do—what portion am I to have in this matter?”
Oliver started at once from the tone of voice he had hitherto used, and which somewhat resembled the purring of a domestic cat, into the growl of the tiger when about to spring. “Thy portion, jail-bird!” he exclaimed, “the gallows—thou shalt hang as high as Haman, if thou betray counsel!—But,” he added, softening his voice, “keep it like a true man, and my favour will be the making of thee. Come hither—thou art bold, I see, though somewhat saucy. Thou hast been a malignant—so writes my worthy friend Colonel Everard; but thou hast now given up that falling cause. I tell thee, friend, not all that the Parliament or the army could do would have pulled down the Stewarts out of their high places, saving that Heaven had a controversy with them. Well, it is a sweet and comely thing to buckle on one’s armour in behalf of Heaven’s cause; otherwise truly, for mine own part, these men might have remained upon the throne even unto this day. Neither do I blame any for aiding them, until these successive great judgments have overwhelmed them and their house. I am not a bloody man, having in me the feeling of human frailty; but, friend, whosoever putteth his hand to the plough, in the great actings which are now on foot in these nations, had best beware that he do not look back; for, rely upon my simple word, that if you fail me, I will not spare on you one foot’s length of the gallows of Haman. Let me therefore know, at a word, if the leaven of thy malignancy is altogether drubbed out of thee?” “Your honourable lordship,” said the cavalier, shrugging up his shoulders, “has done that for most of us, so far as cudgelling to some tune can perform it.”
“Say’st thou?” said the General, with a grim smile on his lip, which seemed to intimate that he was not quite inaccessible to flattery; “yea, truly, thou dost not lie in that—we have been an instrument. Neither are we, as I have already hinted, so severely bent against those who have striven against us as malignants, as others may be. The parliament-men best know their own interest and their own pleasure; but, to my poor thinking, it is full time to close these jars, and to allow men of all kinds the means of doing service to their country; and we think it will be thy fault if thou art not employed to good purpose for the state and thyself, on condition thou puttest away the old man entirely from thee, and givest thy earnest attention to what I have to tell thee.”
“Your lordship need not doubt my attention,” said the cavalier. And the republican General, after another pause, as one who gave his confidence not without hesitation, proceeded to explain his views with a distinctness which he seldom used, yet not without his being a little biassed now and then, by his long habits of circumlocution, which indeed he never laid entirely aside, save in the field of battle.
“Thou seest,” he said, “my friend, how things stand with me. The Parliament, I care not who knows it, love me not—still less do the Council of State, by whom they manage the executive government of the kingdom. I cannot tell why they nourish suspicion against me, unless it is because I will not deliver this poor innocent army, which has followed me in so many military actions, to be now pulled asunder, broken piecemeal and reduced, so that they who have protected the state at the expense of their blood, will not have, perchance, the means of feeding themselves by their labour; which, methinks, were hard measure, since it is taking from Esau his birthright, even without giving him a poor mess of pottage.”
“Esau is likely to help himself, I think,” replied Wildrake.
“Truly, thou say’st wisely,” replied the General; “it is ill starving an armed man, if there is food to be had for taking—nevertheless, far be it from me to encourage rebellion, or want of due subordination to these our rulers. I would only petition, in a due and becoming, a sweet and harmonious manner, that they would listen to our conditions, and consider our necessities. But, sir, looking on me, and estimating me so little as they do, you must think that it would be a provocation in me towards the Council of State, as well as the Parliament, if, simply to gratify your worthy master, I were to act contrary to their purposes, or deny currency to the commission under their authority, which is as yet the highest in the State—and long may it be so for me!—to carry on the sequestration which they intend. And would it not also be said, that I was lending myself to the malignant interest, affording this den of the bloodthirsty and lascivious tyrants of yore, to be in this our day a place of refuge to that old and inveterate Amalekite, Sir Henry Lee, to keep possession of the place in which he hath so long glorified himself? Truly it would be a perilous matter.”
“Am I then to report,” said Wildrake, “an it please you, that you cannot stead Colonel Everard in this matter?”
“Unconditionally, ay—but, taken conditionally, the answer may be otherwise,”—answered Cromwell. “I see thou art not able to fathom my purpose, and therefore I will partly unfold it to thee.—But take notice, that, should thy tongue betray my counsel, save in so far as carrying it to thy master, by all the blood which has been shed in these wild times, thou shalt die a thousand deaths in one!”
“Do not fear me, sir,” said Wildrake, whose natural boldness and carelessness of character was for the present time borne down and quelled, like that of falcon’s in the presence of the eagle.
“Hear me, then,” said Cromwell, “and let no syllable escape thee. Knowest thou not the young Lee, whom they call Albert, a malignant like his father, and one who went up with the young Man to that last ruffle which we had with him at Worcester—May we be grateful for the victory!”
“I know there is such a young gentleman as Albert Lee,” said Wildrake.
“And knowest thou not—I speak not by way of prying into the good Colonel’s secrets, but only as it behoves me to know something of the matter, that I may best judge how I am to serve him—Knowest thou not that thy master, Markham Everard, is a suitor after the sister of this same malignant, a daughter of the old Keeper, called Sir Henry Lee?”
“All this I have heard,” said Wildrake, “nor can I deny that I believe in it.”
“Well then, go to.—When the young man Charles Stewart fled from the field of Worcester, and was by sharp chase and pursuit compelled to separate himself from his followers, I know by sure intelligence that this Albert Lee was one of the last who remained with him, if not indeed the very last.”
“It was devilish like him,” said the cavalier, without sufficiently weighing his expressions, considering in what presence they were to be uttered—”And I’ll uphold him with my rapier, to be a true chip of the old block!”
“Ha, swearest thou?” said the General. “Is this thy reformation?”
“I never swear, so please you,” replied Wildrake, recollecting himself, “except there is some mention of malignants and cavaliers in my hearing; and then the old habit returns, and I swear like one of Goring’s troopers.”
“Out upon thee,” said the General; “what can it avail thee to practise a profanity so horrible to the ears of others, and which brings no emolument to him who uses it?”
“There are, doubtless, more profitable sins in the world than the barren and unprofitable vice of swearing,” was the answer which rose to the lips of the cavalier; but that was exchanged for a profession of regret for having given offence. The truth was, the discourse began to take a turn which rendered it more interesting than ever to Wildrake, who therefore determined not to lose