Waverley; Or 'Tis Sixty Years Since — Complete by Walter Scott (free novels to read TXT) 📗

the Creed.

      For on Hallow-Mass Eve the Night-Hag will ride,
      And all her nine-fold sweeping on by her side,
      Whether the wind sing lowly or loud,
      Sailing through moonshine or swath'd in the cloud.

      The Lady she sat in Saint Swithin's Chair,
      The dew of the night has damp'd her hair:
      Her cheek was pale; but resolved and high
      Was the word of her lip and the glance of her eye.

      She mutter'd the spell of Swithin bold,
      When his naked foot traced the midnight wold,
      When he stopp'd the Hag as she rode the night,
      And bade her descend, and her promise plight.

       He that dare sit on Saint Swithin's Chair,
       When the Night-Hag wings the troubled air,
       Questions three, when he speaks the spell,
       He may ask, and she must tell.

       The Baron has been with King Robert his liege
       These three long years in battle and siege;
       News are there none of his weal or his woe,
       And fain the Lady his fate would know.

       She shudders and stops as the charm she speaks;—
       Is it the moody owl that shrieks?
       Or is it that sound, betwixt laughter and scream,
       The voice of the Demon who haunts the stream?

       The moan of the wind sunk silent and low,
       And the roaring torrent had ceased to flow;
       The calm was more dreadful than raging storm,
       When the cold grey mist brought the ghastly Form!

'I am sorry to disappoint the company, especially Captain Waverley, who listens with such laudable gravity; it is but a fragment, although I think there are other verses, describing the return of the Baron from the wars, and how the lady was found "clay-cold upon the grounsill ledge.'"

'It is one of those figments,' observed Mr. Bradwardine, 'with which the early history of distinguished families was deformed in the times of superstition; as that of Rome, and other ancient nations, had their prodigies, sir, the which you may read in ancient histories, or in the little work compiled by Julius Obsequens, and inscribed by the learned Scheffer, the editor, to his patron, Benedictus Skytte, Baron of Dudershoff.'

'My father has a strange defiance of the marvellous, Captain Waverley,' observed Rose, 'and once stood firm when a whole synod of Presbyterian divines were put to the rout by a sudden apparition of the foul fiend.'

Waverley looked as if desirous to hear more.

'Must I tell my story as well as sing my song? Well—Once upon a time there lived an old woman, called Janet Gellatley, who was suspected to be a witch, on the infallible grounds that she was very old, very ugly, very poor, and had two sons, one of whom was a poet and the other a fool, which visitation, all the neighbourhood agreed, had come upon her for the sin of witchcraft. And she was imprisoned for a week in the steeple of the parish church, and sparely supplied with food, and not permitted to sleep until she herself became as much persuaded of her being a witch as her accusers; and in this lucid and happy state of mind was brought forth to make a clean breast, that is, to make open confession of her sorceries, before all the Whig gentry and ministers in the vicinity, who were no conjurors themselves. My father went to see fair play between the witch and the clergy; for the witch had been born on his estate. And while the witch was confessing that the Enemy appeared, and made his addresses to her as a handsome black man,—which, if you could have seen poor old blear-eyed Janet, reflected little honour on Apollyon's taste,—and while the auditors listened with astonished ears, and the clerk recorded with a trembling hand, she, all of a sudden, changed the low mumbling tone with which she spoke into a shrill yell, and exclaimed, "Look to yourselves! look to yourselves! I see the Evil One sitting in the midst of ye." The surprise was general, and terror and flight its immediate consequences. Happy were those who were next the door; and many were the disasters that befell hats, bands, cuffs, and wigs, before they could get out of the church, where they left the obstinate prelatist to settle matters with the witch and her admirer at his own peril or pleasure.'

'Risu solvuntur tabulae,' said the Baron; 'when they recovered their panic trepidation they were too much ashamed to bring any wakening of the process against Janet Gellatley.' [Footnote: See Note 11]

This anecdote led to a long discussion of

       All those idle thoughts and fantasies,
         Devices, dreams, opinions unsound,
         Shows, visions, soothsays, and prophecies,
       And all that feigned is, as leasings, tales, and lies.

With such conversation, and the romantic legends which it introduced, closed our hero's second evening in the house of Tully-Veolan.

CHAPTER XIV A DISCOVERY—WAVERLEY BECOMES DOMESTICATED AT TULLY-VEOLAN

The next day Edward arose betimes, and in a morning walk around the house and its vicinity came suddenly upon a small court in front of the dog-kennel, where his friend Davie was employed about his four-footed charge. One quick glance of his eye recognised Waverley, when, instantly turning his back, as if he had not observed him, he began to sing part of an old ballad:—

    Young men will love thee more fair and more fast;
      Heard ye so merry the little bird sing?
    Old men's love the longest will last,
      And the throstle-cock's head is under his wing.

    The young man's wrath is like light straw on fire;
      Heard ye so merry the little bird sing?
    But like red-hot steel is the old man's ire,
      And the throstle-cock's head is under his wing.

    The young man will brawl at the evening board;
      Heard ye so merry the little bird sing?
    But the old man will draw at the dawning the sword,
      And the throstle-cock's head is under his wing.

Waverley could not avoid observing that Davie laid something like a satirical emphasis on these lines. He therefore approached, and endeavoured, by sundry queries, to elicit from him what the innuendo might mean; but Davie had no mind to explain, and had wit enough to make his folly cloak his knavery. Edward could collect nothing from him, excepting that the Laird of Balmawhapple had gone home yesterday morning 'wi' his boots fu' o' bluid.' In the garden, however, he met the old butler, who no longer attempted to conceal that, having been bred in the nursery line with Sumack and Co. of Newcastle, he sometimes wrought a turn in the flower-borders to oblige the Laird and Miss Rose. By a series of queries, Edward at length discovered, with a painful feeling of surprise and shame, that Balmawhapple's submission and apology had been the consequence of a rencontre with the Baron before his guest had quitted his pillow, in which the younger combatant had been disarmed and wounded in the sword arm.

Greatly mortified at this information, Edward sought out his friendly host, and anxiously expostulated with him upon the injustice he had done him in anticipating his meeting with Mr. Falconer, a circumstance which, considering his youth and the profession of arms which he had just adopted, was capable of being represented much to his prejudice. The Baron justified himself at greater length than I choose to repeat. He urged that the quarrel was common to them, and that Balmawhapple could not, by the code of honour, evite giving satisfaction to both, which he had done in his case by an honourable meeting, and in that of Edward by such a palinode as rendered the use of the sword unnecessary, and which, being made and accepted, must necessarily sopite the whole affair.

With this excuse, or explanation, Waverley was silenced, if not satisfied; but he could not help testifying some displeasure against the Blessed Bear, which had given rise to the quarrel, nor refrain from hinting that the sanctified epithet was hardly appropriate. The Baron observed, he could not deny that 'the Bear, though allowed by heralds as a most honourable ordinary, had, nevertheless, somewhat fierce, churlish, and morose in his disposition (as might be read in Archibald Simson, pastor of Dalkeith's 'Hieroglyphica Animalium') and had thus been the type of many quarrels and dissensions which had occurred in the house of Bradwardine; of which,' he continued, 'I might commemorate mine own unfortunate dissension with my third cousin by the mother's side, Sir Hew Halbert, who was so unthinking as to deride my family name, as if it had been QUASI BEAR-WARDEN; a most uncivil jest, since it not only insinuated that the founder of our house occupied such a mean situation as to be a custodier of wild beasts, a charge which, ye must have observed, is only entrusted to the very basest plebeians; but, moreover, seemed to infer that our coat-armour had not been achieved by honourable actions in war, but bestowed by way of paranomasia, or pun, upon our family appellation,—a sort of bearing which the French call armoires parlantes, the Latins arma cantantia, and your English authorities canting heraldry, [Footnote: See Note 12] being indeed a species of emblazoning more befitting canters, gaberlunzies, and such like mendicants, whose gibberish is formed upon playing upon the word, than the noble, honourable, and useful science of heraldry, which assigns armorial bearings as the reward of noble and generous actions, and not to tickle the ear with vain quodlibets, such as are found in jestbooks.' Of his quarrel with Sir Hew he said nothing more than that it was settled in a fitting manner.

Having been so minute with respect to the diversions of Tully-Veolan on the first days of Edward's arrival, for the purpose of introducing its inmates to the reader's acquaintance, it becomes less necessary to trace the progress of his intercourse with the same accuracy. It is probable that a young man, accustomed to more cheerful society, would have tired of the conversation of so violent an assertor of the 'boast of heraldry' as the Baron; but Edward found an agreeable variety in that of Miss Bradwardine, who listened with eagerness to his remarks upon literature, and showed great justness of taste in her answers. The sweetness of her disposition had made her submit with complacency, and even pleasure, to the course of reading prescribed by her father, although it not only comprehended several heavy folios of history, but certain gigantic tomes in high-church polemics. In heraldry he was fortunately contented to give her only such a slight tincture as might be acquired by perusal of the two folio volumes of Nisbet. Rose was indeed the very apple of her father's eye. Her constant liveliness, her attention to all those little observances most gratifying to those who would never think of exacting them, her beauty, in which he recalled the features of his beloved wife, her unfeigned piety, and the noble generosity of her disposition, would have justified the affection of the most doting father.

His anxiety on her behalf did not, however, seem to extend itself in that quarter where, according to the general opinion, it is most efficiently displayed, in labouring, namely, to establish her in life, either by a large dowry or a wealthy marriage. By an old settlement, almost all the landed estates of the Baron went, after his death, to a distant relation; and it was supposed that Miss Bradwardine would remain but slenderly provided for, as the good gentleman's cash matters had been too long under the exclusive charge of Bailie Macwheeble to admit of any great expectations from his personal succession. It is true, the said Bailie loved his patron and his patron's daughter next (though at an incomparable distance) to himself. He thought it was possible to set aside the settlement on the male line, and had actually procured an opinion to that effect (and, as he boasted, without a fee) from an eminent Scottish counsel, under whose notice he contrived to bring the point while consulting him regularly on some other business. But the Baron would not listen to such a proposal for an instant. On the contrary, he used to have a perverse pleasure in boasting that the barony of Bradwardine was a male fief, the first charter having been given at that early period when women were not deemed capable to hold a feudal grant; because, according to Les coustusmes de Normandie, c'est l'homme ki se bast et ki conseille; or, as is yet more ungallantly expressed by other authorities, all of whose barbarous names he delighted to quote at full length, because a woman could not serve the superior, or feudal lord, in war, on account of the decorum of her sex, nor assist him with advice, because of her limited intellect, nor keep his counsel, owing to the infirmity of her disposition. He would triumphantly ask, how it would become a female, and that female a Bradwardine, to be seen employed in servitio exuendi, seu detrahendi, caligas regis post battaliam? that is, in