Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since by Walter Scott (e novels to read TXT) 📗

The Baron of Bradwardine, mounted on an active and well-managed horse, and seated on a demi-pique saddle, with deep housings to agree with his livery, was no bad representative of the old school. His light-coloured embroidered coat, and superbly barred waistcoat, his brigadier wig, surmounted by a small gold-laced cocked-hat, completed his personal costume; but he was attended by two well-mounted servants on horseback, armed with holster pistols.

In this guise he ambled forth over hill and valley, the admiration of every farmyard which they passed in their progress, till, 'low down in a grassy vale,' they found Davie Gellatley leading two very tall deer greyhounds, and presiding over half a dozen curs, and about as many bare-legged and bare-headed boys, who, to procure the chosen distinction of attending on the chase, had not failed to tickle his ears with the dulcet appellation of Maister Gellatley, though probably all and each had booted him on former occasions in the character of daft Davie. But this is no uncommon strain of flattery to persons in office, nor altogether confined to the bare-legged villagers of Tully-Veolan: it was in fashion Sixty Years since, is now, and will be six hundred years hence, if this admirable compound of folly and knavery, called the world, shall be then in existence.

These GILLIE-WET-FOOTS, [A bare-footed Highland lad is called a gillie-wet-foot. Gillie, in general, means servant or attendant.] as they were called, were destined to beat the bushes, which they performed with so much success, that, after half an hour's search, a roe was started, coursed, and killed; the Baron following on his white horse, like Earl Percy of yore, and magnanimously flaying and embowelling the slain animal (which, he observed, was called by the French chasseurs FAIRE LA CUREE) with his own baronial COUTEAU DE CHASSE. After this ceremony he conducted his guest homeward by a pleasant and circuitous route, commanding an extensive prospect of different villages and houses, to each of which Mr. Bradwardine attached some anecdote of history or genealogy, told in language whimsical from prejudice and pedantry, but often respectable for the good sense and honourable feelings which his narrative displayed, and almost always curious, if not valuable, for the information they contained.

The truth is, the ride seemed agreeable to both gentlemen, because they found amusement in each other's conversation, although their characters and habits of thinking were in many respects totally opposite. Edward, we have informed the reader, was warm in his feelings, wild and romantic in his ideas and in his taste of reading, with a strong disposition towards poetry. Mr. Bradwardine was the reverse of all this, and piqued himself upon stalking through life with the same upright, starched, stoical gravity which distinguished his evening promenade upon the terrace of Tully-Veolan, where for hours together—the very model old Hardyknute—

As for literature, he read the classic poets, to be sure, and the EPITHALAMIUM of Georgius Buchanan, and Arthur Johnston's PSALMS, of a Sunday; and the DELICIAE POETARUM SCOTORUM, and Sir David Lindsay's WORKS, and Barbour's BRUCE, and Blind Harry's WALLACE, and the GENTLE SHEPHERD, and the CHERRY AND THE SLAE. But though he thus far sacrificed his time to the Muses, he would if the truth must be spoken, have been much better pleased had the pious or sapient apothegms, as well as the historical narratives, which these various works contained, been presented to him in the form of simple prose. And he sometimes could not refrain from expressing contempt of the 'vain and unprofitable art of poem-making,' in which, he said, 'the only one who had excelled in his time was Allan Ramsay, the periwig-maker.'

[The Baron ought to have remembered that the joyous Allan literally drew his blood from the house of the noble Earl, whom he terms—

But although Edward and he differed TOTO COELO, as the Baron would have said, upon this subject, yet they met upon history as on a neutral ground, in which each claimed an interest. The Baron, indeed, only cumbered his memory with matters of fact; the cold, dry, hard outlines which history delineates. Edward, on the contrary, loved to fill up and round the sketch with the colouring of a warm and vivid imagination, which gives light and life to the actors and speakers in the drama of past ages. Yet with tastes so opposite, they contributed greatly to each other's amusement. Mr. Bradwardine's minute narratives and powerful memory supplied to Waverley fresh subjects of the kind upon which his fancy loved to labour, and opened to him a new mine of incident and of character. And he repaid the pleasure thus communicated, by an earnest attention, valuable to all story-tellers, more especially to the Baron, who felt his habits of self-respect flattered by it; and sometimes also by reciprocal communications, which interested Mr. Bradwardine, as confirming or illustrating his own favourite anecdotes. Besides, Mr. Bradwardine loved to talk of the scenes of his youth, which had been spent in camps and foreign lands, and had many interesting particulars to tell of the generals under whom he had served, and the actions he had witnessed.

Both parties returned to Tully-Veolan in great good humour with each other; Waverley desirous of studying more attentively what he considered as a singular and interesting character, gifted with a memory containing a curious register of ancient and modern anecdotes; and Bradwardine disposed to regard Edward as PUER (or rather JUVENIS) BONAE SPEI ET MAGNAE INDOLIS, a youth devoid of that petulant volatility, which is impatient of, or vilipends, the conversation and advice of his seniors, from which he predicted great things of his future success and deportment in life. There was no other guest except Mr. Rubrick, whose information and discourse, as a clergyman and a scholar, harmonized very well with that of the Baron and his guest.

Shortly after dinner, the Baron, as if to show that his temperance was not entirely theoretical, proposed a visit to Rose's apartment, or, as he termed it, her TROISIEME ETAGE. Waverley was accordingly conducted through one or two of those long awkward passages with which ancient architects studied to puzzle the inhabitants of the houses which they planned, at the end of which Mr. Bradwardine began to ascend, by two steps at once, a very steep, narrow, and winding stair, leaving Mr. Rubrick and Waverley to follow at more leisure, while he should announce their approach to his daughter.

After having climbed this perpendicular corkscrew until their brains were almost giddy, they arrived in a little matted lobby, which served as an ante-room to Rose's SANCTUM SANCTORUM, and through which they entered her parlour. It was a small but pleasant apartment, opening to the south, and hung with tapestry; adorned besides with two pictures, one of her mother, in the dress of a shepherdess, with a bell-hoop; the other of the Baron, in his tenth year, in a blue coat, embroidered waistcoat, laced hat, and bag-wig, with a bow in his hand. Edward could not help smiling at the costume, and at the odd resemblance between the round, smooth, red-checked, staring visage in the portrait, and the gaunt, bearded, hollow-eyed, swarthy features, which travelling, fatigues of war, and advanced age, had bestowed on the original. The Baron joined in the laugh. 'Truly,' he said, 'that picture was a woman's fantasy of my good mother's (a daughter of the Laird of Tulliellum, Captain Waverley; I indicated the house to you when we were on the top of the Shinnyheuch; it was burnt by the Dutch auxiliaries brought in by the Government in 1715); I never sat for my pourtraicture but once since that was painted, and it was at the special and reiterated request of the Marechal Duke of Berwick.'

The good old gentleman did not mention what Mr. Rubrick afterwards told Edward, that the Duke had done him this honour on account of his being the first to mount the breach of a fort; in Savoy during the memorable campaign of 1709, and his having there defended himself with his half-pike for nearly ten minutes before any support reached him. To do the Baron justice, although sufficiently prone to dwell upon, and even to exaggerate, his family dignity and consequence, he was too much a man of real courage ever to allude to such personal acts of merit as he had himself manifested.

Miss Rose now appeared from the interior room of her apartment, to welcome her father and his friends. The little labours in which she had been employed obviously showed a natural taste, which required only cultivation. Her father had taught her French and Italian, and a few of the ordinary authors in those languages ornamented her shelves. He had endeavoured also to be her preceptor in music; but as he began with the more abstruse doctrines of the science, and was not perhaps master of them himself,