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

brutality to menace her with one of his pistols if she continued to fly. Yet she slacked not her pace for his threats, and he must either have executed them, or seen her escape to carry the tale to the Lodge, had she not unhappily stumbled over the projecting root of a fir-tree. But as he rushed upon his prey, rescue interposed in the person of Joceline Joliffe, with his quarterstaff on his shoulder. “How now? what means this?” he said, stepping between Phœbe and her pursuer. Tomkins, already roused to fury, made no other answer than by discharging at Joceline the pistol which he held in his hand. The ball grazed the under keeper’s face, who, in requital of the assault, and saying “Aha! Let ash answer iron,” applied his quarterstaff with so much force to the Independent’s head, that lighting on the left temple, the blow proved almost instantly mortal.

A few convulsive struggles were accompanied with these broken words,— “Joceline—I am gone—but I forgive thee—Doctor Rochecliffe—I wish I had minded more—Oh!—the clergyman—the funeral service”—As he uttered these words, indicative, it may be, of his return to a creed, which perhaps he had never abjured so thoroughly as he had persuaded himself, his voice was lost in a groan, which, rattling in the throat, seemed unable to find its way to the air. These were the last symptoms of life: the clenched hands presently relaxed—the closed eyes opened, and stared on the heavens a lifeless jelly—the limbs extended themselves and stiffened. The body, which was lately animated with life, was now a lump of senseless clay—the soul, dismissed from its earthly tenement in a moment so unhallowed, was gone before the judgment-seat.

“Oh, what have you done?—what have you done, Joceline!” exclaimed Phœbe; “you have killed the man!”

“Better than he should have killed me,” answered Joceline; “for he was none of the blinkers that miss their mark twice running.—And yet I am sorry for him.—Many a merry bout have we had together when he was wild Philip Hazeldine, and then he was bad enough; but since he daubed over his vices with hypocrisy, he seems to have proved worse devil than ever.”

“Oh, Joceline, come away,” said poor Phœbe, “and do not stand gazing on him thus;” for the woodsman, resting on his fatal weapon, stood looking down on the corpse with the appearance of a man half stunned at the event.

“This comes of the ale pitcher,” she continued, in the true style of female consolation, “as I have often told you—For Heaven’s sake, come to the Lodge, and let us consult what is to be done.”

“Stay first, girl, and let me drag him out of the path; we must not have him lie herein all men’s sight—Will you not help me, wench?”

“I cannot, Joceline—I would not touch a lock on him for all Woodstock.”

“I must to this gear myself, then,” said Joceline, who, a soldier as well as a woodsman, still had great reluctance to the necessary task. Something in the face and broken words of the dying man had made a deep and terrific impression on nerves not easily shaken. He accomplished it, however, so far as to drag the late steward out of the open path, and bestow his body amongst the undergrowth of brambles and briers, so as not to be visible unless particularly looked for. He then returned to Phœbe, who had sate speechless all the while beneath the tree over whose roots she had stumbled.

“Come away, wench,” he said, “come away to the Lodge, and let us study how this is to be answered for—the mishap of his being killed will strangely increase our danger. What had he sought of thee, wench, when you ran from him like a madwoman?—But I can guess—Phil was always a devil among the girls, and I think, as Doctor Rochecliffe says, that, since he turned saint, he took to himself seven devils worse than himself.—Here is the very place where I saw him, with his sword in his hand raised against the old knight, and he a child of the parish—it was high treason at least—but, by my faith, he hath paid for it at last.”

“But, oh, Joceline,” said Phœbe, “how could you take so wicked a man into your counsels, and join him in all his plots about scaring the roundhead gentlemen?”

“Why look thee, wench, I thought I knew him at the first meeting especially when Bevis, who was bred here when he was a dog-leader, would not fly at him; and when we made up our old acquaintance at the Lodge, I found he kept up a close correspondence with Doctor Rochecliffe, who was persuaded that he was a good King’s man, and held consequently good intelligence with him.—The doctor boasts to have learned much through his means; I wish to Heaven he may not have been as communicative in turn.”

“Oh, Joceline,” said the waiting-woman, “you should never have let him within the gate of the Lodge!”

“No more I would, if I had known how to keep him out; but when he went so frankly into our scheme, and told me how I was to dress myself like Robinson the player, whose ghost haunted Harrison—I wish no ghost may haunt me!—when he taught me how to bear myself to terrify his lawful master, what could I think, wench? I only trust the Doctor has kept the great secret of all from his knowledge.—But here we are at the Lodge. Go to thy chamber, wench, and compose thyself. I must seek out Doctor Rochecliffe; he is ever talking of his quick and ready invention. Here come times, I think, that will demand it all.”

Phœbe went to her chamber accordingly; but the strength arising from the pressure of danger giving way when the danger was removed, she quickly fell into a succession of hysterical fits, which required the constant attention of Dame Jellicot, and the less alarmed, but more judicious care of Mistress Alice, before they even abated in their rapid recurrence.

The under-keeper carried his news to the politic Doctor, who was extremely disconcerted, alarmed, nay angry with Joceline, for having slain a person on whose communications he had accustomed himself to rely. Yet his looks declared his suspicion, whether his confidence had not been too rashly conferred—a suspicion which pressed him the more anxiously, that he was unwilling to avow it, as a derogation from his character for shrewdness, on which he valued himself.

Dr. Rochecliffe’s reliance, however, on the fidelity of Tomkins, had apparently good grounds. Before the Civil Wars, as may be partly collected from what has been already hinted at, Tomkins, under his true name of Hazeldine, had been under the protection of the Rector of Woodstock, occasionally acted as his clerk, was a distinguished member of his choir, and, being a handy and ingenious fellow, was employed in assisting the antiquarian researches of Dr. Rochecliffe through the interior of Woodstock. When he engaged in the opposite side in the Civil Wars, he still kept up his intelligence with the divine, to whom he had afforded what seemed valuable information from time to time. His assistance had latterly been eminently useful in aiding the Doctor, with the assistance of Joceline and Phœbe, in contriving and executing the various devices by which the Parliamentary Commissioners had been expelled from Woodstock. Indeed, his services in this respect had been thought worthy of no less a reward than a present of what plate remained at the Lodge, which had been promised to the Independent accordingly. The Doctor, therefore, while admitting he might be a bad man, regretted him as a useful one, whose death, if enquired after, was likely to bring additional danger on a house which danger already surrounded, and which contained a pledge so precious.