"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 assured 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 cock 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 passed 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 circumstances. Suddenly he saw the Baron and Balmawhapple pass 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 assured 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-cock'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 Cæsar, 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 succumb, 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 grass, in the various attitudes of severe inattention which youth assumes when listening to a story. Sweetheart pored into the depths of a buttercup. 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,