Red Cap Tales Part 2

"Go instantly and find his Honour at the Black Hag," cried the majordomo of Bradwardine, wrathful at this interference, "and tell him that there is a gentleman come from England waiting him at the Hall."

"Can this poor fellow deliver a letter?" Edward asked doubtfully.

"With all fidelity, sir," said the butler, "that is, to any one whom he respects. After all, he is more knave than fool. We call the innocent Davie Dolittle, though his proper name is Davie Gellatley. But the truth is, that since my young mistress, Miss Rose Bradwardine, took a fancy to dress him up in fine clothes, the creature cannot be got to do a single hand's turn of work. But here comes Miss Rose herself. Glad will she be to welcome one of the name of Waverley to her father's house!"

III. THE BARON AND THE BEAR

Rose Bradwardine was still quite young. Scarce did the tale of her years number seventeen, but already she was noted over all the countryside as a pretty girl, with a skin like snow, and hair that glistened like pale gold when the light fell upon it. Living so far from society, she was naturally not a little shy. But as soon as her first feeling of bashfulness was over, Rose spoke freely and brightly. Edward and she, however, had but little time to be alone together. For it was not long before the Baron of Bradwardine appeared, striding toward them as if he had possessed himself of the giant's seven-league boots.

Bradwardine was a tall, thin, soldierly man, who in his time had seen much of the world, and who under a hard and even stern exterior, hid a heart naturally warm.

He was much given to the singing of French songs and to making long and learned Latin quotations. And indeed he quoted Latin, even with the tears standing in his eyes, as he first shook Edward by the hand and then embraced him in the foreign fas.h.i.+on on both cheeks--all to express the immense pleasure it was to receive in his house of Tully-Veolan "a worthy scion of the old stock of Waverley-Honour."

While Miss Rose ran off to make some changes in her dress, the Baron conducted Edward into a hall hung about with pikes and armour. Four or five servants, in old-fas.h.i.+oned livery, received them with honour, the majordomo at their head. The butler-gardener was not to be caught napping a second time.

Bradwardine took Captain Waverley at once into an old dining room all panelled with black oak, round the walls of which hung pictures of former chiefs of the line of Tully-Veolan. Somewhere out-of-doors a bell was ringing to announce the arrival of other guests, and Edward observed with some interest that the table was laid for six people. In such a desolate country it seemed difficult to imagine where they would arrive from.

Upon this point Edward soon received enlightenment. First, there was the Laird of Balmawhapple,--"a discreet young gentleman," said the Baron, "much given to field sports." Next came the Laird of Killancureit, who cultivated his own fields and cared for his own cattle--thereby (quoth the Baron) showing the commonness of his origin. Added to these were a "non-juring" Episcopal minister--that is, one who had refused to take the oaths of allegiance to King George's government, and, last of all, the "Baron-Bailie" or land-steward of Bradwardine, one Mr. Macwheeble.

This last, to show his consciousness of his inferior position, seated himself as far as possible from the table, and as often as he wanted to eat, he bent himself nearly double over his plate, in the shape of a clasp-knife about to shut. When dinner was over, Rose and the clergyman discreetly retired, when, with a sign to the butler, the Baron of Bradwardine produced out of a locked case a golden cup called the Blessed Bear of Bradwardine, in which first the host and then all the company pledged the health of the young English stranger. After a while, the Baron and Edward set out to see their guests a certain distance on their way, going with them down the avenue to the village "change-house"

or inn, where Balmawhapple and Killancureit had stabled their horses.

Edward, being weary, would much rather have found himself in bed, but this desertion of good company the Baron would noways allow. So under the low cobwebbed roof of Lucky Macleary's kitchen the four gentlemen sat down to "taste the sweets of the night." But it was not long before the wine began to do its work in their heads. Each one of them, Edward excepted, talked or sang without paying any attention to his fellows.

From wine they fell to politics, when Balmawhapple proposed a toast which was meant to put an affront upon the uniform Edward wore, and the King in whose army he served.

"To the little gentleman in black velvet," cried the young Laird, "he who did such service in 1702, and may the white horse break his neck over a mound of his making!"

The "little gentleman in black velvet" was the mole over whose hillock King William's horse is said to have stumbled, while the "white horse"

represented the house of Hanover.

Though of a Jacobite family, Edward could not help taking offence at the obvious insult, but the Baron was before him. The quarrel was not his, he a.s.sured him. The guest's quarrel was the host's--so long as he remained under his roof.

"Here," quoth the Baron, "I am _in loco parentis_ to you, Captain Waverley. I am bound to see you scatheless. And as for you, Mr. Falconer of Balmawhapple, I warn you to let me see no more aberrations from the paths of good manners."

"And I tell you, Mr. Cosmo Comyne Bradwardine of Bradwardine and Tully-Veolan," retorted the other, in huge disdain, "that I will make a muir c.o.c.k of the man that refuses my toast, whether he be a crop-eared English Whig wi' a black ribband at his lug, or ane wha deserts his friends to claw favour wi' the rats of Hanover!"

In an instant rapiers were out, and the Baron and Balmawhapple hard at it. The younger man was stout and active, but he was no match for the Baron at the sword-play. And the encounter would not have lasted long, had not the landlady, Lucky Macleary, hearing the well-known clash of swords, come running in on them, crying that surely the gentlemen would not bring dishonour on an honest widow-woman's house, when there was all the lee land in the country to do their fighting upon.

So saying, she stopped the combat very effectually by flinging her plaid over the weapons of the adversaries.

Next morning Edward awoke late, and in no happy frame of mind. It was an age of duels, and with his first waking thoughts there came the memory of the insult which had been pa.s.sed upon him by the Laird of Balmawhapple. His position as an officer and a Waverley left him no alternative but to send that sportsman a challenge. Upon descending, he found Rose Bradwardine presiding at the breakfast table. She was alone, but Edward felt in no mood for conversation, and sat gloomy, silent, and ill-content with himself and with circ.u.mstances. Suddenly he saw the Baron and Balmawhapple pa.s.s the window arm in arm, and the next moment the butler summoned him to speak with his master in another apartment.

There he found Balmawhapple, no little sulky and altogether silent, with the Baron by his side. The latter in his capacity of mediator made Edward a full and complete apology for the events of the past evening--an apology which the young man gladly accepted along with the hand of the offender--somewhat stiffly given, it is true, owing to the necessity of carrying his right arm in a sling--the result (as Balmawhapple afterwards a.s.sured Miss Rose) of a fall from his horse.

It was not till the morning of the second day that Edward learned the whole history of this reconciliation, which had at first been so welcome to him. It was Daft Davie Gellatley, who, by the roguish singing of a ballad, first roused his suspicions that something underlay Balmawhapple's professions of regret for his conduct.

"The young man will brawl at the evening board _Heard ye so merry the little birds sing?_ But the old man will draw at the dawning the sword, _And the throstle-c.o.c.k's head is under his wing._"

Edward could see by the sly looks of the Fool that he meant something personal by this, so he plied the butler with questions, and discovered that the Baron had actually fought Balmawhapple on the morning after the insult, and wounded him in the sword-arm!

Here, then, was the secret of the young Laird's unexpected submission and apology. As Davie Gellatley put it, Balmawhapple had been "sent hame wi' his boots full o' bluid!"

THE FIRST INTERLUDE OF ACTION

The tale-telling had at this point to be broken off. Clouds began to spin themselves from Eildon top. Dinner also was in prospect, and, most of all, having heard so much of the tale, the four listeners desired to begin to "play Waverley."

Sweetheart made a stately, if skirted, Bradwardine. Besides, she was in _Caesar_, and had store of Latin quotations--mostly, it is true, from the examples in the grammar, such as "_Illa incedit regina!_" Certainly she walked like a queen. Or, as it might be expressed, more fittingly with the character of the Baron in the original:

"Stately stepped she east the wa', And stately stepped she west."

Hugh John considered the hero's part in any story only his due. His only fault with that of Waverley was that so far he had done so little. He specially resented the terrible combat "in the dawning"

between the Baron and the overbold Balmawhapple (played by Maid Margaret). Sir Toady Lion as low comedian ("camelion" he called it) performed numerous antics as Daft Davie Gellatley. He had dressed the part to perfection by putting his striped jersey on outside his coat, and sticking in his cricket cap such feathers as he could find.

"Lie down, Hugh John," he cried, in the middle of his dancing and singing round and round the combatants; "why, you are asleep in bed!"

This, according to the authorities, being obvious, the baffled hero had to succ.u.mb, with the muttered reflection that "Jim Hawkins wouldn't have had to stay asleep, when there was a fight like that going on!"

Still, however, Hugh John could not restrain the natural rights of criticism. He continually raised his head from his pillow of dried branches to watch Sweetheart and Maid Margaret.

"You fight just like girls," he cried indignantly; "keep your left hand behind you, Bradwardine--or Balmawhapple will hack it off! I say--girls _are_ silly things. You two are afraid of hurting each other. Now me and Toady Lion--"

And he gave details of a late fraternal combat much in the manner of Froissart.

It is to be noted that thus far both Sweetheart and Maid Margaret disdained the female parts, the latter even going the length of saying that she preferred Celie Stubbs, the Squire's daughter at Waverley-Honour, to Rose Bradwardine. On being asked for an explanation of this heresy, she said, "Well, at any rate, Celie Stubbs got a new hat to come to church in!"

And though I read the "Repentance and a Reconciliation" chapter, which makes number Twelve of _Waverley_, to the combatants, I was conscious that I must hasten on to scenes more exciting if I meant to retain the attention of my small but exacting audience. Furthermore, it was beginning to rain. So, hurriedly breaking off the tale, we drove back to Melrose across the green holms of St.

Boswells.

It was after the hour of tea, and the crowd of visitors had ebbed away from the precincts of the Abbey before the tale was resumed. A flat "throuch"

stone sustained the narrator, while the four disposed themselves on the sunny gra.s.s, in the various att.i.tudes of severe inattention which youth a.s.sumes when listening to a story. Sweetheart pored into the depths of a b.u.t.tercup. Hugh John scratched the freestone of a half-buried tomb with a nail till told to stop. Sir Toady Lion, having a "pinch-bug" coralled in his palms, sat regarding it cautiously between his thumbs. Only Maid Margaret, her dimpled chin on her knuckles, sat looking upward in rapt attention. For her there was no joy like that of a story. Only, she was too young to mind letting the tale-teller know it. That made the difference.

Above our heads the beautiful ruin mounted, now all red gold in the lights, and purple in the shadows, while round and round, and through and through, from highest tower to lowest arch, the swifts shrieked and swooped.

THE SECOND TALE FROM "WAVERLEY"

I. THE CATTLE-LIFTING

NEXT morning (I continued, looking up for inspiration to the pinnacles of Melrose, cut against the clear sky of evening, as sharply as when "John Morow, master mason," looked upon his finished work and found it very good)--next morning, as Captain Edward Waverley was setting out for his morning walk, he found the castle of Bradwardine by no means the enchanted palace of silence he had first discovered. Milkmaids, bare-legged and wild-haired, ran about distractedly with pails and three-legged stools in their hands, crying, "Lord, guide us!" and "Eh, sirs!"

Bailie Macwheeble, mounted on his dumpy, round-barrelled pony, rode hither and thither with half the ragged rascals of the neighbourhood clattering after him. The Baron paced the terrace, every moment glancing angrily up at the Highland hills from under his bushy grey eyebrows.

From the byre-la.s.ses and the Bailie, Edward could obtain no satisfactory explanation of the disturbance. He judged it wiser not to seek it from the angry Baron.