Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since Read online

  CHAPTER XXX

  SHOWS THAT THE LOSS OF A HORSE'S SHOE MAY BE A SERIOUS INCONVENIENCE

  The manner and air of Waverley, but, above all, the glittering contentsof his purse, and the indifference with which he seemed to regardthem, somewhat overawed his companion, and deterred him from making anyattempts to enter upon conversation. His own reflections were, moreover,agitated by various surmises, and by plans of self-interest, with whichthese were intimately connected. The travellers journeyed, therefore,in silence, until it was interrupted by the annunciation, on the part ofthe guide, that his 'naig had lost a fore-foot shoe, which, doubtless,his honour would consider it was his part to replace.'

  This was what lawyers call a FISHING QUESTION, calculated to ascertainhow far Waverley was disposed to submit to petty imposition. 'My partto replace your horse's shoe, you rascal!' said Waverley, mistaking thepurport of the intimation.

  'Indubitably,' answered Mr. Cruickshanks; 'though there was no preceeseclause to that effect, it canna be expected that I am to pay forthe casualties whilk may befall the puir naig while in your honour'sservice.--Nathless, if your honour--'

  'Oh, you mean I am to pay the farrier; but where shall we find one?'

  Rejoiced at discerning there would be no objection made on the part ofhis temporary master, Mr. Cruickshanks assured him that Cairnvreckan,a village which they were about to enter, was happy in an excellentblacksmith; 'but as he was a professor, he would drive a nail for noman on the Sabbath, or kirk-fast, unless it were in a case of absolutenecessity, for which he always charged sixpence each shoe.' The mostimportant part of this communication, in the opinion of the speaker,made a very slight impression on the hearer, who only internallywondered what college this veterinary professor belonged to; not awarethat the word was used to denote any person who pretended to uncommonsanctity of faith and manner.

  As they entered the village of Cairnvreckan, they speedily distinguishedthe smith's house. Being also a PUBLIC, it was two stories high, andproudly reared its crest, covered with grey slate, above the thatchedhovels by which it was surrounded. The adjoining smithy betokened noneof the Sabbatical silence and repose which Ebenezer had augured from thesanctity of his friend. On the contrary, hammer clashed and anvil rang,the bellows groaned, and the whole apparatus of Vulcan appeared to bein full activity. Nor was the labour of a rural and pacific nature. Themaster smith, benempt, as his sign intimated, John Mucklewrath, with twoassistants, toiled busily in arranging, repairing, and furbishing oldmuskets, pistols, and swords, which lay scattered around his workshopin military confusion. The open shed, containing the forge, was crowdedwith persons who came and went as if receiving and communicatingimportant news; and a single glance at the aspect of the people whotraversed the street in haste, or stood assembled in groups, witheyes elevated, and hands uplifted, announced that some extraordinaryintelligence was agitating the public mind of the municipality ofCairnvreckan. 'There is some news,' said mine host of the Candlestick,pushing his lantern-jawed visage and bare-boned nag rudely forward intothe crowd--'there is some news; and if it please my Creator, I willforthwith obtain speirings thereof.'

  Waverley, with better regulated curiosity than his attendant's,dismounted, and gave his horse to a boy who stood idling near. It arose,perhaps, from the shyness of his character in early youth, that he feltdislike at applying to a stranger even for casual information, withoutpreviously glancing at his physiognomy and appearance. While he lookedabout in order to select the person with whom he would most willinglyhold communication, the buzz around saved him in some degree the troubleof interrogatories. The names of Lochiel, Clanronald, Glengarry, andother distinguished Highland Chiefs, among whom Vich Ian Vohr wasrepeatedly mentioned, were as familiar in men's mouths as householdwords; and from the alarm generally expressed, he easily conceived thattheir descent into the Lowlands, at the head of their armed tribes, hadeither already taken place, or was instantly apprehended.

  Ere Waverley could ask particulars, a strong, large-boned, hard-featuredwoman, about forty, dressed as if her clothes had been flung on witha pitchfork, her cheeks flushed with a scarlet red where they werenot smutted with soot and lamp-black, jostled through the crowd, and,brandishing high a child of two years old, which she danced in herarms, without regard to its screams of terror, sang forth, with all hermight,--

  'Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling, Charlie is my darling, The young Chevalier!

  'D'ye hear what's come ower ye now,' continued the virago, 'ye whingeingWhig carles? D'ye hear wha's coming to cow yer cracks?

  Little wot ye wha's coming, Little wot ye wha's coming, A' the wild Macraws are coming.'

  The Vulcan of Cairnvreckan, who acknowledged his Venus in this exultingBacchante, regarded her with a grim and ire-foreboding countenance,while some of the senators of the village hastened to interpose.'Whisht, gudewife; is this a time, or is this a day, to be singing yourranting fule sangs in?--a time when the wine of wrath is poured outwithout mixture in the cup of indignation, and a day when the landshould give testimony against popery, and prelacy, and quakerism, andindependency, and supremacy, and erastianism, and antinomianism, and a'the errors of the church?'

  'And that's a' your Whiggery,' re-echoed the Jacobite heroine; 'that'sa' your Whiggery, and your presbytery, ye cut-lugged, graning carles!What! d'ye think the lads wi' the kilts will care for yer synods andyer presbyteries, and yer buttock-mail, and yer stool o' repentance?Vengeance on the black face o't! Mony an honester woman's been set uponit than streeks doon beside ony Whig in the country. I mysell'--

  Here John Mucklewrath, who dreaded her entering upon a detail ofpersonal experience, interposed his matrimonial authority. 'Gae hame,and be d-- (that I should say sae), and put on the sowens for supper.'

  'And you, ye doil'd dotard,' replied his gentle helpmate, her wrath,which had hitherto wandered abroad over the whole assembly, being atonce and violently impelled into its natural channel, 'ye standthere hammering dog-heads for fules that will never snap them at aHighlandman, instead, of earning bread for your family, and shoeing thiswinsome young gentleman's horse that's just come frae the north! I'sewarrant him nane of your whingeing King George folk, but a gallantGordon, at the least o' him.'

  The eyes of the assembly were now turned upon Waverley, who took theopportunity to beg the smith to shoe his guide's horse with all speed,as he wished to proceed on his journey;--for he had heard enough to makehim sensible that there would be danger in delaying long in this place.The smith's eye rested on him with a look of displeasure and suspicion,not lessened by the eagerness with which his wife enforced Waverley'smandate. 'D'ye hear what the weel-favoured young gentleman says, yedrunken ne'er-do-good?'

  And what may your name be, sir?' quoth Mucklewrath.

  'It is of no consequence to you, my friend, provided I pay your labour.'

  'But it may be of consequence to the state, sir,' replied an old farmer,smelling strongly of whisky and peat-smoke; 'and I doubt we maun delayyour journey till you have seen the Laird.'

  'You certainly,' said Waverley, haughtily, 'will find it both difficultand dangerous to detain me, unless you can produce some properauthority.'

  There was a pause and a whisper among the crowd--'Secretary Murray;''Lord Lewis Gordon;' 'Maybe the Chevalier himsell!' Such were thesurmises that passed hurriedly among them, and there was obviously anincreased disposition to resist Waverley's departure. He attempted toargue mildly with them, but his voluntary ally, Mrs. Mucklewrath, brokein upon and drowned his expostulations, taking his part with an abusiveviolence, which was all set down to Edward's account by those on whom itwas bestowed. 'YE'LL stop ony gentleman that's the Prince's freend?'for she too, though with other feelings, had adopted the general opinionrespecting Waverley. 'I daur ye to touch him,' spreading abroad her longand muscular fingers, garnished with claws which a vulture might haveenvied. 'I'll set my ten commandments in the face o' the first loon thatlays a finger on him.'

  'Gae ham
e, gudewife, quoth the farmer aforesaid; 'it wad better set youto be nursing the gudeman's bairns than to be deaving us here.'

  'HIS bairns!' retorted the amazon, regarding her husband with a grin ofineffable contempt--'HIS bairns!

  O gin ye were dead, gudeman, And a green turf on your head, gudeman! Then I would ware my widowhood Upon a ranting Highlandman.'

  This canticle, which excited a suppressed titter among the younger partof the audience, totally overcame the patience of the taunted man of theanvil. 'Deil be in me but I'll put this het gad down her throat!' criedhe, in an ecstasy of wrath, snatching a bar from the forge; and he mighthave executed his threat, had he not been withheld by a part of the mob;while the rest endeavoured to force the termagant out of his presence.

  Waverley meditated a retreat in the confusion, but his horse was nowhereto be seen. At length he observed, at some distance, his faithfulattendant, Ebenezer, who, as soon as he had perceived the turn matterswere likely to take, had withdrawn both horses from the press, and,mounted on the one, and holding the other, answered the loud andrepeated calls of Waverley for his horse--'Na, na! if ye are nae friendto kirk and the king, and are detained as siccan a person, ye maunanswer to honest men of the country for breach of contract; and I maunkeep the naig and the walise for damage and expense, in respect myhorse and mysell will lose to-morrow's day's-wark, besides the afternoonpreaching.'

  Edward, out of patience, hemmed in and hustled by the rabble on everyside, and every moment expecting personal violence, resolved totry measures of intimidation, and at length drew a pocket-pistol,threatening, on the one hand, to shoot whomsoever dared to stop him,and, on the other, menacing Ebenezer with a similar doom, if he stirreda foot with the horses. The sapient Partridge says, that one man with apistol is equal to a hundred unarmed, because, though he can shoot butone of the multitude, yet no one knows but that he himself may be thatluckless individual. The levy en masse of Cairnvreckan would thereforeprobably have given way, nor would Ebenezer, whose natural paleness hadwaxed three shades more cadaverous, have ventured to dispute a mandateso enforced, had not the Vulcan of the village, eager to discharge uponsome more worthy object the fury which his helpmate had provoked, andnot ill satisfied to find such an object in Waverley, rushed at him withthe red-hot bar of iron, with such determination as made the dischargeof his pistol an act of self-defence. The unfortunate man fell; andwhile Edward, thrilled with a natural horror at the incident, neitherhad presence of mind to unsheathe his sword nor to draw his remainingpistol, the populace threw themselves upon him, disarmed him, and wereabout to use him with great violence, when the appearance of a venerableclergyman, the pastor of the parish, put a curb on their fury.

  This worthy man (none of the Goukthrapples or Rentowels) maintained hischaracter with the common people, although he preached the practicalfruits of Christian faith, as well as its abstract tenets, and wasrespected by the higher orders, notwithstanding he declined soothingtheir speculative errors by converting the pulpit of the gospel into aschool of heathen morality. Perhaps it is owing to this mixture of faithand practice in his doctrine, that, although his memory has formed asort of era in the annals of Cairnvreckan, so that the parishioners, todenote what befell Sixty Years since, still say it happened 'in good Mr.Morton's time,' I have never been able to discover which he belonged to,the evangelical, or the moderate party in the kirk. Nor do I hold thecircumstance of much moment, since, in my own remembrance, the one washeaded by an Erskine, the other by a Robertson. [The Rev. John Erskine,D.D., an eminent Scottish divine, and a most excellent man, headedthe Evangelical party in the Church of Scotland at the time when thecelebrated Dr. Robertson, the historian, was the leader of the Moderateparty. These two distinguished persons were colleagues in the Old GreyFriars' Church, Edinburgh; and, however much they differed in churchpolitics, preserved the most perfect harmony as private friends, and asclergymen serving the same cure.]

  Mr. Morton had been alarmed by the discharge of the pistol, and theincreasing hubbub around the smithy. His first attention, after he haddirected the bystanders to detain Waverley, but to abstain from injuringhim, was turned to the body of Mucklewrath, over which his wife, in arevulsion of feeling, was weeping, howling, and tearing her elf-locks,in a state little short of distraction. On raising up the smith, thefirst discovery was, that he was alive; and the next, that he was likelyto live as long as if he had never heard the report of a pistol in hislife. He had made a narrow escape, however; the bullet had grazed hishead, and stunned him for a moment or two, which trance terror andconfusion of spirit had prolonged, somewhat longer. He now aroseto demand vengeance on the person of Waverley, and with difficultyacquiesced in the proposal of Mr. Morton, that he should be carriedbefore the laird, as a justice of peace, and placed at his disposal. Therest of the assistants unanimously agreed to the measure recommended;even Mrs. Mucklewrath, who had begun to recover from her hysterics,whimpered forth, 'She wadna say naething against what the ministerproposed; he was e'en ower gude for his trade, and she hoped to see himwi' a dainty decent bishop's gown on his back; a comelier sight thanyour Geneva cloaks and bands, I wis.'

  All controversy being thus laid aside, Waverley, escorted by the wholeinhabitants of the village who were not bed-ridden, was conducted to thehouse of Cairnvreckan, which was about half a mile distant.