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

"a.s.sure 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sage 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 s.p.a.ce 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, m.u.f.fling 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.al 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 princ.i.p.als 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 m.u.f.fled. 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 a.s.sume another tone.

"I beg pardon," he said, "my dear Doctor-I kiss the hem of your ca.s.sock-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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d christened, or his wife buried-without the a.s.sistance 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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.s (my rapier being sheathed of course) until our princ.i.p.als 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 c.o.c.k-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 pa.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al parties appeared on the field.

Everard exclaimed angrily to Wildrake, "Is this your friendship? In Heaven's name, what make you in that fool's jacket, and playing the pranks of a jack-pudding?" while his worthy second, somewhat crest-fallen, held down his head, like a boy caught in roguery, and went to pick up his weapon, stretching his head, as he pa.s.sed, into the coppice, to obtain another glimpse, if possible, of the concealed object of his curiosity.

Charles in the meantime, still more surprised at what he beheld, called out on his part-"What! Doctor Rochecliffe become literally one of the church militant, and tilting with my friend cavalier Wildrake? May I use the freedom to ask him to withdraw, as Colonel Everard and I have some private business to settle?"

It was Dr. Rochecliffe's cue, on this important occasion, to have armed himself with the authority of his sacred office, and used a tone of interference which might have overawed even a monarch, and made him feel that his monitor spoke by a warrant higher than his own. But the indiscreet lat.i.tude he had just given to his own pa.s.sion, and the levity in which he had been detected, were very unfavourable to his a.s.suming that superiority, to which so uncontrollable a spirit as that of Charles, wilful as a prince, and capricious as a wit, was at all likely to submit. The Doctor did, however, endeavour to rally his dignity, and replied, with the gravest, and at the same time the most respectful, tone he could a.s.sume, that he also had business of the most urgent nature, which prevented him from complying with Master Kerneguy's wishes and leaving the spot.

"Excuse this untimely interruption," said Charles, taking off his hat, and bowing to Colonel Everard, "which I will immediately put an end to." Everard gravely returned his salute, and was silent.

"Are you mad, Doctor Rochecliffe?" said Charles-"or are you deaf?-or have you forgotten your mother-tongue? I desired you to leave this place."

"I am not mad," said the divine, rousing up his resolution, and regaining the natural firmness of his voice-"I would prevent others from being so; I am not deaf-I would pray others to hear the voice of reason and religion; I have not forgotten my mother-tongue-but I have come hither to speak the language of the Master of kings and princes."

"To fence with broomsticks, I should rather suppose," said the King- "Come, Doctor Rochecliffe, this sudden fit of a.s.sumed importance befits you as little as your late frolic. You are not, I apprehend, either a Catholic priest or a Scotch Ma.s.s-John to claim devoted obedience from your hearers, but a Church-of-England-man, subject to the rules of that Communion-and to its HEAD." In speaking the last words, the King lowered his voice to a low and impressive whisper. Everard observing this drew back, the natural generosity of his temper directing him to avoid overhearing private discourse, in which the safety of the speakers might be deeply concerned. They continued, however, to observe great caution in their forms of expression.

"Master Kerneguy," said the clergyman, "it is not I who a.s.sume authority or control over your wishes-G.o.d forbid; I do but tell you what reason, Scripture, religion, and morality, alike prescribe for your rule of conduct."