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 space 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, muffling 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 grass 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 passed 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 principal 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 principals 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.