Part 24 (2/2)
”Friend!” answered the old man, starting up-”We are foes, sir-foes now, and for ever!”
So saying, and starting from the seat into which he had rather fallen than thrown himself, he ran out of the room with a precipitation of step which he was apt to use upon occasions of irritable feeling, and which was certainly more eager than dignified, especially as he muttered while he ran, and seemed as if he were keeping up his own pa.s.sion, by recounting over and over the offence which he had received.
”So!” said Colonel Everard, ”and there was not strife enough between mine uncle and the people of Woodstock already, but I must needs increase it, by chafing this irritable and quick-tempered old man, eager as I knew him to be in his ideas of church-government, and stiff in his prejudices respecting all who dissent from him! The mob of Woodstock will rise; for though he would not get a score of them to stand by him in any honest or intelligible purpose, yet let him cry havoc and destruction, and I will warrant he has followers enow. And my uncle is equally wild and unpersuadable. For the value of all the estate he ever had, he would not allow a score of troopers to be quartered in the house for defence; and if he be alone, or has but Joceline to stand by him, he will be as sure to fire upon those who come to attack the Lodge, as if he had a hundred men in garrison; and then what can chance but danger and bloodshed?”
This progress of melancholy antic.i.p.ation was interrupted by the return of Master Holdenough, who, hurrying into the room, with the same precipitate pace at which he had left it, ran straight up to the Colonel, and said, ”Take my hand, Markham-take my hand hastily; for the old Adam is whispering at my heart, that it is a disgrace to hold it extended so long.”
”Most heartily do I receive your hand, my venerable friend,” said Everard, ”and I trust in sign of renewed amity.”
”Surely, surely,”-said the divine, shaking his hand kindly; ”thou hast, it is true, spoken bitterly, but thou hast spoken truth in good time; and I think-though your words were severe-with a good and kindly purpose. Verily, and of a truth, it were sinful in me again to be hasty in provoking violence, remembering that which you have upbraided me with”-
”Forgive me, good Master Holdenough,” said Colonel Everard, ”it was a hasty word; I meant not in serious earnest to upbraid.”
”Peace, I pray you, peace,” said the divine; ”I say, the allusion to that which you have most justly upbraided me with-though the charge aroused the gall of the old man within me, the inward tempter being ever on the watch to bring us to his lure-ought, instead of being resented, to have been acknowledged by me as a favour, for so are the wounds of a friend termed faithful. And surely I, who have by one unhappy exhortation to battle and strife sent the living to the dead-and I fear brought back even the dead among the living-should now study peace and good will, and reconciliation of difference, leaving punishment to the Great Being whose laws are broken, and vengeance to Him who hath said, I will repay it.”
The old man's mortified features lighted up with a humble confidence as he made this acknowledgment; and Colonel Everard, who knew the const.i.tutional infirmities, and the early prejudices of professional consequence and exclusive party opinion, which he must have subdued ere arriving at such a tone of candour, hastened to express his admiration of his Christian charity, mingled with reproaches on himself for having so deeply injured his feelings.
”Think not of it-think not of it, excellent young man,” said Holdenough; ”we have both erred-I in suffering my zeal to outrun my charity, you perhaps in pressing hard on an old and peevish man, who had so lately poured out his sufferings into your friendly bosom. Be it all forgotten. Let your friends, if they are not deterred by what has happened at this manor of Woodstock, resume their habitation as soon as they will. If they can protect themselves against the powers of the air, believe me, that if I can prevent it by aught in my power, they shall have no annoyance from earthly neighbours; and a.s.sure yourself, good sir, that my voice is still worth something with the worthy Mayor, and the good Aldermen, and the better sort of housekeepers up yonder in the town, although the lower cla.s.ses are blown about with every wind of doctrine. And yet farther, be a.s.sured, Colonel, that should your mother's brother, or any of his family, learn that they have taken up a rash bargain in returning to this unhappy and unhallowed house, or should they find any qualms in their own hearts and consciences which require a ghostly comforter, Nehemiah Holdenough will be as much at their command by night or day, as if they had been bred up within the holy pale of the Church in which he is an unworthy minister; and neither the awe of what is fearful to be seen within these walls, nor his knowledge of their blinded and carnal state, as bred up under a prelatic dispensation, shall prevent him doing what lies in his poor abilities for their protection and edification.”
”I feel all the force of your kindness, reverend sir,” said Colonel Everard, ”but I do not think it likely that my uncle will give you trouble on either score. He is a man much accustomed to be his own protector in temporal danger, and in spiritual doubts to trust to his own prayers and those of his Church.”
”I trust I have not been superfluous in offering mine a.s.sistance,” said the old man, something jealous that his proffered spiritual aid had been held rather intrusive. ”I ask pardon if that is the case, I humbly ask pardon-I would not willingly be superfluous.”
The Colonel hastened to appease this new alarm of the watchful jealousy of his consequence, which, joined with a natural heat of temper which he could not always subdue, were the good man's only faults.
They had regained their former friendly footing, when Roger Wildrake returned from the hut of Joceline, and whispered his master that his emba.s.sy had been successful. The Colonel then addressed the divine, and informed him, that as the Commissioners had already given up Woodstock, and as his uncle, Sir Henry Lee, proposed to return to the Lodge about noon, he would, if his reverence pleased, attend him up to the borough.
”Will you not tarry,” said the reverend man, with something like inquisitive apprehension in his voice, ”to welcome your relatives upon their return to this their house?”
”No, my good friend,” said Colonel Everard; ”the part which I have taken in these unhappy broils, perhaps also the mode of wors.h.i.+p in which I have been educated, have so prejudiced me in mine uncle's opinion, that I must be for some time a stranger to his house and family.”
”Indeed! I rejoice to hear it with all my heart and soul,” said the divine. ”Excuse my frankness-I do indeed rejoice; I had thought-no matter what I had thought; I would not again give offence. But truly though the maiden hath a pleasant feature, and he, as all men say, is in human things unexceptionable, yet-but I give you pain-in sooth, I will say no more unless you ask my sincere and unprejudiced advice, which you shall command, but which I will not press on you superfluously. Wend we to the borough together-the pleasant solitude of the forest may dispose us to open our hearts to each other.”
They did walk up to the little town in company, and somewhat to Master Holdenough's surprise, the Colonel, though they talked on various subjects, did not request of him any ghostly advice on the subject of his love to his fair cousin, while, greatly beyond the expectation of the soldier, the clergyman kept his word, and in his own phrase, was not so superfluous as to offer upon so delicate a point his unasked counsel.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH.
Then are the harpies gone-Yet ere we perch Where such foul birds have roosted, let us cleanse The foul obscenity they've left behind them.
AGAMEMNON.
The emba.s.sy of Wildrake had been successful, chiefly through the mediation of the Episcopal divine, whom we formerly found acting in the character of a chaplain to the family, and whose voice had great influence on many accounts with its master.
A little before high noon, Sir Henry Lee, with his small household, were again in unchallenged possession of their old apartments at the Lodge of Woodstock; and the combined exertions of Joceline Joliffe, of Phoebe, and of old Joan, were employed in putting to rights what the late intruders had left in great disorder.
Sir Henry Lee had, like all persons of quality of that period, a love of order amounting to precision, and felt, like a fine lady whose dress has been disordered in a crowd, insulted and humiliated by the rude confusion into which his household goods had been thrown, and impatient till his mansion was purified from all marks of intrusion. In his anger he uttered more orders than the limited number of his domestics were likely to find time or hands to execute. ”The villains have left such sulphureous steams behind them, too,” said the old knight, ”as if old Davie Leslie and the whole Scottish army had quartered among them.”
”It may be near as bad,” said Joceline, ”for men say, for certain, it was the Devil came down bodily among them, and made them troop off.”
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