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

stooped, and took from the floor a man’s glove, of the fashion worn by the troopers, having something like the old-fashioned gauntleted projections of thick leather arising from the wrist, which go half way up to the elbow, and secure the arm against a cut with a sword. But Joceline had no sooner looked at what in itself was so common an object, than he dropped it from his hand, staggered backward, uttered a groan, and nearly fell to the ground.

“Now, the coward’s curse be upon thee for an idiot!” said the knight, who had picked up the glove, and was looking at it—“thou shouldst be sent back to school, and flogged till the craven’s blood was switched out of thee—What dost thou look at but a glove, thou base poltroon, and a very dirty glove, too? Stay, here is writing—Joseph Tomkins? Why, that is the roundheaded fellow—I wish he hath not come to some mischief, for this is not dirt on the cheveron, but blood. Bevis may have bit the fellow, and yet the dog seemed to love him well too, or the stag may have hurt him. Out, Joceline, instantly, and see where he is—wind your bugle.”

“I cannot go,” said Joliffe, “unless”—and again he looked piteously at Dr. Rochecliffe, who saw no time was to be lost in appeasing the ranger’s terrors, as his ministry was most needful in the present circumstances.—“Get spade and mattock,” he whispered to him, “and a dark lantern, and meet me in the Wilderness.”

Joceline left the room; and the Doctor, before following him, had a few words of explanation with Colonel Lee. His own spirit, far from being dismayed on the occasion, rather rose higher, like one whose natural element was intrigue and danger. “Here hath been wild work,” he said, “since you parted. Tomkins was rude to the wench Phœbe—Joceline and he had a brawl together, and Tomkins is lying dead in the thicket, not far from Rosamond’s Well. It will be necessary that Joceline and I go directly to bury the body; for besides that some one might stumble upon it, and raise an alarm, this fellow Joceline will never be fit for any active purpose till it is under ground. Though as stout as a lion, the under-keeper has his own weak side, and is more afraid of a dead body than a living one. When do you propose to start to-morrow?”

“By daybreak, or earlier,” said Colonel Lee; “but we will meet again. A vessel is provided, and I have relays in more places than one—we go off from the coast of Sussex; and I am to get a letter at ——, acquainting me precisely with the spot.”

“Wherefore not go off instantly?” said the Doctor.

“The horses would fail us,” replied Albert; “they have been hard ridden to-day.”

“Adieu,” said Rochecliffe, “I must to my task—Do you take rest and repose for yours. To conceal a slaughtered body, and convey on the same night a king from danger and captivity, are two feats which have fallen to few folks save myself; but let me not, while putting on my harness, boast myself as if I were taking it off after a victory.” So saying he left the apartment, and, muffling himself in his cloak, went out into what was called the Wilderness.

The weather was a raw frost. The mists lay in partial wreaths upon the lower grounds; but the night, considering that the heavenly bodies were in a great measure hidden by the haze, was not extremely dark. Dr. Rochecliffe could not, however, distinguish the under-keeper until he had hemmed once or twice, when Joceline answered the signal by showing a glimpse of light from the dark lantern which he carried. Guided by this intimation of his presence, the divine found him leaning against a buttress which had once supported a terrace, now ruinous. He had a pickaxe and shovel, together with a deer’s hide hanging over his shoulder.

“What do you want with the hide, Joceline,” said Dr. Rochecliffe, “that you lumber it about with you on such an errand?”

“Why, look you, Doctor,” he answered, “it is as well to tell you all about it. The man and I—he there—you know whom I mean—had many years since a quarrel about this deer. For though we were great friends, and Philip was sometimes allowed by my master’s permission to help me in mine office, yet I knew, for all that, Philip Hazeldine was sometimes a trespasser. The deer-stealers were very bold at that time, it being just before the breaking out of the war, when men were becoming unsettled— And so it chanced, that one day, in the Chase, I found two fellows, with their faces blacked and shirts over their clothes, carrying as prime a buck between them as any was in the park. I was upon them in the instant—one escaped, but I got hold of the other fellow, and who should it prove to be but trusty Phil Hazeldine! Well, I don’t know whether it was right or wrong, but he was my old friend and pot-companion, and I took his word for amendment in future; and he helped me to hang up the deer on a tree, and I came back with a horse to carry him to the Lodge, and tell the knight the story, all but Phil’s name. But the rogues had been too clever for me; for they had flayed and dressed the deer, and quartered him, and carried him off, and left the hide and horns, with a chime, saying,—

‘The haunch to thee,
The breast to me,
The hide and the horns for the keeper’s fee.’

And this I knew for one of Phil’s mad pranks, that he would play in those days with any lad in the country. But I was so nettled that I made the deer’s hide be curried and dressed by a tanner, and swore that it should be his winding-sheet or mine; and though I had long repented my rash oath, yet now, Doctor, you see what it is come to—though I forgot it, the devil did not.”

“It was a very wrong thing to make a vow so sinful,” said Rochecliffe; “but it would have been greatly worse had you endeavoured to keep it. Therefore, I bid you cheer up,” said the good divine; “for in this unhappy case, I could not have wished, after what I have heard from Phœbe and yourself, that you should have kept your hand still, though I may regret that the blow has proved fatal. Nevertheless, thou hast done even that which was done by the great and inspired legislator, when he beheld an Egyptian tyrannizing over a Hebrew, saving that, in the case present, it was a female, when, says the Septuagint, Percussum Egyptium abscondit sabulo; the meaning whereof I will explain to you another time. Wherefore, I exhort you not to grieve beyond measure; for although this circumstance is unhappy in time and place, yet, from what Phœbe hath informed me of yonder wretch’s opinions, it is much to be regretted that his brains had not been beaten out in his cradle, rather than that he had grown up to be one of those Grindlestonians, or Muggletonians, in whom is the perfection of every foul and blasphemous heresy, united with such an universal practice of hypocritical assentation as would deceive their master, even Satan himself.”

“Nevertheless, sir,” said the forester, “I hope you will bestow some of the service of the Church on this poor man, as it was his last wish, naming you, sir, at the same time; and unless this were done, I should scarce dare to walk out in the dark again for my whole life.”

“Thou art a silly fellow; but if,” continued the Doctor, “he named me as he departed, and desired the last rites of the Church, there was, it may be, a turning from evil and a seeking to good even in his last moments; and if Heaven granted him grace to form a prayer so fitting, wherefore should man refuse it? All I fear is the briefness of time.”

“Nay, your reverence may cut the service somewhat short,” said Joceline; “assuredly he does not deserve the whole of it; only if something were not to be done, I believe I should flee the country. They were his last words; and methinks he sent Bevis with his glove to put me in mind of them.”

“Out, fool! Do you think,” said the Doctor, “dead men send gauntlets to the living, like knights in a romance; or, if so, would they choose dogs to carry their challenges? I tell thee, fool, the cause was natural enough. Bevis, questing about, found the body, and brought the glove to you to intimate where it was lying, and to require assistance; for such is the high instinct of these animals towards one in peril.”

“Nay, if you think so, Doctor,” said Joceline—“and, doubtless, I must say, Bevis took an interest in the man—if indeed it was not something worse in the shape of Bevis, for methought his eyes looked wild and fiery, as if he would have spoken.”

As he talked thus, Joceline rather hung back, and, in doing so, displeased the Doctor, who exclaimed, “Come along, thou lazy laggard! Art thou a soldier, and a brave one, and so much afraid of a dead man? Thou hast killed men in battle and in chase, I warrant thee.”

“Ay, but their backs were to me,” said Joceline. “I never saw one of them cast back his head, and glare at me as yonder fellow did, his eye retaining a glance of hatred, mixed with terror and reproach, till it became fixed like a jelly. And were you not with me, and my master’s concerns, and something else, very deeply at stake, I promise you I would not again look at him for all Woodstock.”

“You must, though,” said the Doctor, suddenly pausing, “for here is the place where he lies. Come hither deep into the copse; take care of stumbling—Here is a place just fitting, and we will draw the briars over the grave afterwards.”

As the Doctor thus issued his directions, he assisted also in the execution of them; and while his attendant laboured to dig a shallow and mishapen grave, a task which the state of the soil, perplexed with roots, and hardened by the influence of the frost, rendered very difficult, the divine read a few passages out of the funeral service, partly in order to appease the superstitious terrors of Joceline, and partly because he held it matter of conscience not to deny the Church’s rites to one who had requested their aid in extremity.