Woodstock; or, the Cavalier by Walter Scott (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📖

shoulder, and lingered more than once, to listen to the fluent discourse of their new guest, whom, on the preceding evening, she had, while in attendance at supper, accounted one of the most stupid inmates to whom the gates of Woodstock had been opened since the times of Fair Rosamond.

Louis Kerneguy then, when they were left only four in the chamber, without the interruption of domestics, and the successive bustle occasioned by the discussion and removal of the morning meal, became apparently sensible, that his friend and ostensible patron Albert ought not altogether to be suffered to drop to leeward in the conversation, while he was himself successfully engaging the attention of those members of his family to whom he had become so recently known. He went behind his chair, therefore, and, leaning on the back, said with a good-humoured tone, which made his purpose entirely intelligible,—

“Either my good friend, guide, and patron, has heard worse news this morning than he cares to tell us, or he must have stumbled over my tattered jerkin and leathern hose, and acquired, by contact, the whole mass of stupidity which I threw off last night with those most dolorous garments. Cheer up, my dear Colonel Albert, if your affectionate page may presume to say so—you are in company with those whose society, dear to strangers, must be doubly so to you. Oddsfish, man, cheer up! I have seen you gay on a biscuit and a mouthful of water-cresses—don’t let your heart fail you on Rhenish wine and venison.”

“Dear Louis,” said Albert, rousing himself into exertion, and somewhat ashamed of his own silence, “I have slept worse, and been astir earlier than you.”

“Be it so,” said his father; “yet I hold it no good excuse for your sullen silence. Albert, you have met your sister and me, so long separated from you, so anxious on your behalf, almost like mere strangers, and yet you are returned safe to us, and you find us well.”

“Returned indeed—but for safety, my dear father, that word must be a stranger to us Worcester folk for some time. However, it is not my own safety about which I am anxious.”

“About whose, then, should you be anxious?—All accounts agree that the King is safe out of the dogs’ jaws.”

“Not without some danger, though,” muttered Louis, thinking of his encounter with Bevis on the preceding evening.

“No, not without danger, indeed,” echoed the knight; “but, as old Will says,—

‘There’s such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason dares not peep at what it would.’

“No, no—thank God, that’s cared for; our Hope and Fortune is escaped, so all news affirm, escaped from Bristol—if I thought otherwise, Albert, I should be as sad as you are. For the rest of it, I have lurked a month in this house when discovery would have been death, and that is no longer since than after Lord Holland and the Duke of Buckingham’s rising at Kingston; and hang me, if I thought once of twisting my brow into such a tragic fold as yours, but cocked my hat at misfortune as a cavalier should.”

“If I might put in a word,” said Louis, “it would be to assure Colonel Albert Lee that I verily believe the King would think his own hap, wherever he may be, much the worse that his best subjects were seized with dejection on his account.”

“You answer boldly on the King’s part, young man,” said Sir Henry.

“Oh, my father was meikle about the King’s hand,” answered Louis, recollecting his present character.

“No wonder, then,” said Sir Henry, “that you have so soon recovered your good spirits and good breeding, when you heard of his Majesty’s escape. Why, you are no more like the lad we saw last night, than the best hunter I ever had was like a dray-horse.”

“Oh, there is much in rest, and food, and grooming,” answered Louis. “You would hardly know the tired jade you dismounted from last night, when she is brought out prancing and neighing the next morning, rested, refreshed, and ready to start again—especially if the brute hath some good blood, for such pick up unco fast.”

“Well, then, but since thy father was a courtier, and thou hast learned, I think, something of the trade, tell us a little, Master Kerneguy, of him we love most to hear about—the King; we are all safe and secret, you need not be afraid. He was a hopeful youth; I trust his flourishing blossom now gives promise of fruit?”

As the knight spoke, Louis bent his eyes on the ground, and seemed at first uncertain what to answer. But, admirable at extricating himself from such dilemmas, he replied, “that he really could not presume to speak on such a subject in the presence of his patron, Colonel Albert Lee, who must be a much better judge of the character of King Charles than he could pretend to be.”

Albert was accordingly next assailed by the Knight, seconded by Alice, for some account of his Majesty’s character.

“I will speak but according to facts,” said Albert; “and then I must be acquitted of partiality. If the King had not possessed enterprise and military skill, he never would have attempted the expedition to Worcester;—had he not had personal courage, he had not so long disputed the battle that Cromwell almost judged it lost. That he possesses prudence and patience, must be argued from the circumstances attending his flight; and that he has the love of his subjects is evident, since, necessarily known to many, he has been betrayed by none.”

“For shame, Albert!” replied his sister; “is that the way a good cavalier doles out the character of his Prince, applying an instance at every concession, like a pedlar measuring linen with his rod?—Out upon you!—no wonder you were beaten, if you fought as coldly for your King as you now talk for him.”

“I did my best to trace a likeness from what I have seen and known of the original, sister Alice,” replied her brother.—“If you would have a fancy portrait, you must get an artist of more imagination than I have to draw it for you.”

“I will be that artist myself” said Alice; “and, in my portrait, our Monarch shall show all that he ought to be, having such high pretensions—all that he must be, being so loftily descended—all that I am sure he is, and that every loyal heart in the kingdom ought to believe him.”

“Well said, Alice,” quoth the old knight—“Look thou upon this picture, and on this!—Here is our young friend shall judge. I wager my best nag—that is, I would wager him had I one left—that Alice proves the better painter of the two.—My son’s brain is still misty, I think, since his defeat—he has not got the smoke of Worcester out of it. Plague on thee!—a young man, and cast down for one beating? Had you been banged twenty times like me, it had been time to look grave.—But come, Alice, forward; the colours are mixed on your pallet—forward with something that shall show like one of Vandyck’s living portraits, placed beside the dull dry presentation there of our ancestor Victor Lee.”

Alice, it must be observed, had been educated by her father in the notions of high and even exaggerated loyalty, which characterized the cavaliers, and she was really an enthusiast in the royal cause. But, besides, she was in good spirits at her brother’s happy return, and wished to prolong the gay humour in which her father had of late scarcely ever indulged.

“Well, then,” she said, “though I am no Apelles, I will try to paint an Alexander, such as I hope, and am determined to believe, exists in the person of our exiled sovereign, soon I trust to be restored. And I will not go farther than his own family. He shall have all the chivalrous courage, all the warlike skill, of Henry of France, his grandfather, in order to place him on the throne; all his benevolence, love of his people, patience even of unpleasing advice, sacrifice of his own wishes and pleasures to the commonweal, that, seated there, he may be blest while living, and so long remembered when dead, that for ages after it shall be thought sacrilege to breathe an aspersion against the throne which he had occupied! Long after he is dead, while there remains an old man who has seen him, were the condition of that survivor no higher than a groom or a menial, his age shall be provided for at the public charge, and his grey hairs regarded with more distinction than an earl’s coronet, because he remembers the Second Charles, the monarch of every heart in England!”

While Alice spoke, she was hardly conscious of the presence of any one save her father and brother; for the page withdrew himself somewhat from the circle, and there was nothing to remind her of him. She gave the reins, therefore, to her enthusiasm; and as the tears glittered in her eye, and her beautiful features became animated, she seemed like a descended cherub proclaiming the virtues of a patriot monarch. The person chiefly interested in her description held himself back, as we have said, and concealed his own features, yet so as to preserve a full view of the beautiful speaker.

Albert Lee, conscious in whose presence this eulogium was pronounced, was much embarrassed; but his father, all whose feelings were flattered by the panegyric, was in rapture.

“So much for the King, Alice,” he said, “and now for the Man.”

“For the man,” replied Alice, in the same tone, “need I wish him more than the paternal virtues of his unhappy father, of whom his worst enemies have recorded, that if moral virtues and religious faith were to be selected as the qualities which merited a crown, no man could plead the possession of them in a higher or more indisputable degree. Temperate, wise, and frugal, yet munificent in rewarding merit—a friend to letters and the muses, but a severe discourager of the misuse of such gifts—a worthy gentleman—a kind master—the best friend, the best father, the best Christian”—Her voice began to falter, and her father’s handkerchief was already at his eyes.

“He was, girl, he was!” exclaimed Sir Henry; “but no more on’t, I charge ye—no more on’t—enough; let his son but possess his virtues, with better advisers, and better fortunes, and he will be all that England, in her warmest wishes, could desire.”

There was a pause after this; for Alice felt as if she had spoken too frankly and too zealously for her sex and youth. Sir Henry was occupied in melancholy recollections on the fate of his late sovereign, while Kerneguy and his supposed patron felt embarrassed, perhaps from a consciousness that the real Charles fell far short of his ideal character, as designed in such glowing colours. In some cases, exaggerated or unappropriate praise becomes the most severe satire.

But such reflections were not of a nature to be long willingly cherished by the person to whom they might have been of great advantage. He assumed a tone of raillery, which is, perhaps, the readiest mode of escaping from the feelings of self-reproof. “Every cavalier,” he said, “should bend his knee to thank Mistress Alice Lee for having made such a flattering portrait of the King their master, by laying under contribution for his benefit the virtues of all his ancestors; only there was one point he would not have expected a female painter to have passed over in silence. When she made him, in right of his grandfather and father, a muster of royal and individual excellences, why could she not have endowed him at the same time with his mother’s personal charms? Why should not the son of Henrietta Maria, the finest woman of her day, add the recommendations of a handsome face and figure to his internal qualities? He had the same hereditary title to good looks as to mental qualifications; and the picture, with such an addition, would be perfect in its way—and God send it might be a resemblance.”

“I understand you, Master Kerneguy,” said Alice; “but I am no fairy, to bestow, as those do in the nursery tales, gifts which Providence has denied. I am woman enough to have made enquiries on the subject, and I know the general report is, that the King, to have been the son of such handsome parents, is unusually hard-favoured.”

“Good God, sister!” said Albert, starting impatiently from his seat. “Why, you yourself told me so,” said Alice, surprised at the emotion he testified; “and you said”—

“This is intolerable,” muttered Albert; “I must out to speak with Joceline without delay—Louis,” (with an imploring look to Kerneguy,) “you will surely come with me?”

“I would with all my heart,” said Kerneguy, smiling maliciously; “but you see how I suffer still from lameness.—Nay, nay, Albert,” he whispered, resisting young Lee’s attempt to prevail on him to leave the room, “can