Old Mortality, Volume 1.

by Walter Scott

  CHAPTER XI.

  At last comes the troop, by the word of command Drawn up in our court, where the Captain cries, Stand! Swift

  Major Bellenden's ancient valet, Gideon Pike as he adjusted his master'sclothes by his bedside, preparatory to the worthy veteran's toilet,acquainted him, as an apology for disturbing him an hour earlier than hisusual time of rising, that there was an express from Tillietudlem.

  "From Tillietudlem?" said the old gentleman, rising hastily in his bed,and sitting bolt upright,--"Open the shutters, Pike--I hope mysister-in-law is well--furl up the bed-curtain.--What have we all here?"(glancing at Edith's note.) "The gout? why, she knows I have not had afit since Candlemas.--The wappen-schaw? I told her a month since I wasnot to be there.--Paduasoy and hanging sleeves? why, hang the gipsyherself!--Grand Cyrus and Philipdastus?--Philip Devil!--is the wench gonecrazy all at once? was it worth while to send an express and wake meat five in the morning for all this trash?--But what says herpostscriptum?--Mercy on us!" he exclaimed on perusing it,--"Pike, saddleold Kilsythe instantly, and another horse for yourself."

  "I hope nae ill news frae the Tower, sir?" said Pike, astonished at hismaster's sudden emotion.

  "Yes--no--yes--that is, I must meet Claverhouse there on some expressbusiness; so boot and saddle, Pike, as fast as you can.--O, Lord! whattimes are these!--the poor lad--my old cronie's son!--and the silly wenchsticks it into her postscriptum, as she calls it, at the tail of all thistrumpery about old gowns and new romances!"

  In a few minutes the good old officer was fully equipped; and havingmounted upon his arm-gaunt charger as soberly as Mark Antony himselfcould have done, he paced forth his way to the Tower of Tillietudlem.

  On the road he formed the prudent resolution to say nothing to the oldlady (whose dislike to presbyterians of all kinds he knew to beinveterate) of the quality and rank of the prisoner detained within herwalls, but to try his own influence with Claverhouse to obtain Morton'sliberation.

  "Being so loyal as he is, he must do something for so old a cavalier as Iam," said the veteran to himself; "and if he is so good a soldier as theworld speaks of, why, he will be glad to serve an old soldier's son. Inever knew a real soldier that was not a frank-hearted, honest fellow;and I think the execution of the laws (though it's a pity they find itnecessary to make them so severe) may be a thousand times betterintrusted with them than with peddling lawyers and thick-skulled countrygentlemen."

  Such were the ruminations of Major Miles Bellenden, which were terminatedby John Gudyill (not more than half-drunk) taking hold of his bridle, andassisting him to dismount in the roughpaved court of Tillietudlem.

  "Why, John," said the veteran, "what devil of a discipline is this youhave been keeping? You have been reading Geneva print this morningalready."

  "I have been reading the Litany," said John, shaking his head with a lookof drunken gravity, and having only caught one word of the Major'saddress to him; "life is short, sir; we are flowers of the field,sir--hiccup--and lilies of the valley."

  "Flowers and lilies? Why, man, such carles as thou and I can hardly becalled better than old hemlocks, decayed nettles, or withered rag-weed;but I suppose you think that we are still worth watering."

  "I am an old soldier, sir, I thank Heaven--hiccup"--

  "An old skinker, you mean, John. But come, never mind, show me the way toyour mistress, old lad."

  John Gudyill led the way to the stone hall, where Lady Margaret wasfidgeting about, superintending, arranging, and re-forming thepreparations made for the reception of the celebrated Claverhouse, whomone party honoured and extolled as a hero, and another execrated as abloodthirsty oppressor.

  "Did I not tell you," said Lady Margaret to her principal femaleattendant--"did I not tell you, Mysie, that it was my especial pleasureon this occasion to have every thing in the precise order wherein it wasupon that famous morning when his most sacred majesty partook of hisdisjune at Tillietudlem?"

  "Doubtless, such were your leddyship's commands, and to the best of myremembrance"--was Mysie answering, when her ladyship broke in with, "Thenwherefore is the venison pasty placed on the left side of the throne, andthe stoup of claret upon the right, when ye may right weel remember,Mysie, that his most sacred majesty with his ain hand shifted the pastyto the same side with the flagon, and said they were too good friends tobe parted?"

  "I mind that weel, madam," said Mysie; "and if I had forgot, I have heardyour leddyship often speak about that grand morning sin' syne; but Ithought every thing was to be placed just as it was when his majesty, Godbless him, came into this room, looking mair like an angel than a man, ifhe hadna been sae black-a-vised."

  "Then ye thought nonsense, Mysie; for in whatever way his most sacredmajesty ordered the position of the trenchers and flagons, that, as weelas his royal pleasure in greater matters, should be a law to hissubjects, and shall ever be to those of the house of Tillietudlem."

  "Weel, madam," said Mysie, making the alterations required, "it's easymending the error; but if every thing is just to be as his majesty leftit, there should be an unco hole in the venison pasty."

  At this moment the door opened.

  "Who is that, John Gudyill?" exclaimed the old lady. "I can speak to noone just now.--Is it you, my dear brother?" she continued, in somesurprise, as the Major entered; "this is a right early visit."

  "Not more early than welcome, I hope," replied Major Bellenden, as hesaluted the widow of his deceased brother; "but I heard by a note whichEdith sent to Charnwood about some of her equipage and books, that youwere to have Claver'se here this morning, so I thought, like an oldfirelock as I am, that I should like to have a chat with this risingsoldier. I caused Pike saddle Kilsythe, and here we both are."

  "And most kindly welcome you are," said the old lady; "it is just what Ishould have prayed you to do, if I had thought there was time. You see Iam busy in preparation. All is to be in the same order as when"--"Theking breakfasted at Tillietudlem," said the Major, who, like all LadyMargaret's friends, dreaded the commencement of that narrative, and wasdesirous to cut it short,--"I remember it well; you know I was waiting onhis majesty."

  "You were, brother," said Lady Margaret; "and perhaps you can help me toremember the order of the entertainment."

  "Nay, good sooth," said the Major, "the damnable dinner that Noll gave usat Worcester a few days afterwards drove all your good cheer out of mymemory.--But how's this?--you have even the great Turkey-leatherelbow-chair, with the tapestry cushions, placed in state."

  "The throne, brother, if you please," said Lady Margaret, gravely.

  "Well, the throne be it, then," continued the Major. "Is that to beClaver'se's post in the attack upon the pasty?"

  "No, brother," said the lady; "as these cushions have been once honouredby accommodating the person of our most sacred Monarch, they shall never,please Heaven, during my life-time, be pressed by any less dignifiedweight."

  "You should not then," said the old soldier, "put them in the way of anhonest old cavalier, who has ridden ten miles before breakfast; for, toconfess the truth, they look very inviting. But where is Edith?"

  "On the battlements of the warder's turret," answered the old lady,"looking out for the approach of our guests."

  "Why, I'll go there too; and so should you, Lady Margaret, as soon as youhave your line of battle properly formed in the hall here. It's a prettything, I can tell you, to see a regiment of horse upon the march."

  Thus speaking, he offered his arm with an air of old-fashioned gallantry,which Lady Margaret accepted with such a courtesy of acknowledgment asladies were wont to make in Holyroodhouse before the year 1642, which,for one while, drove both courtesies and courts out of fashion.

  Upon the bartizan of the turret, to which they ascended by many a windingpassage and uncouth staircase, they found Edith, not in the attitude of ayoung lady who watches with fluttering curiosity the approach of a smartregiment of dr
agoons, but pale, downcast, and evincing, by hercountenance, that sleep had not, during the preceding night, been thecompanion of her pillow. The good old veteran was hurt at her appearance,which, in the hurry of preparation, her grandmother had omitted tonotice.

  "What is come over you, you silly girl?" he said; "why, you look like anofficer's wife when she opens the News-letter after an action, andexpects to find her husband among the killed and wounded. But I know thereason--you will persist in reading these nonsensical romances, day andnight, and whimpering for distresses that never existed. Why, how thedevil can you believe that Artamines, or what d'ye call him, foughtsinglehanded with a whole battalion? One to three is as great odds asever fought and won, and I never knew any body that cared to take that,except old Corporal Raddlebanes. But these d--d books put all prettymen's actions out of countenance. I daresay you would think very littleof Raddlebanes, if he were alongside of Artamines.--I would have thefellows that write such nonsense brought to the picquet forleasing-making."

  [Note: Romances of the Seventeenth Century. As few, in the present age, are acquainted with the ponderous folios to which the age of Louis XIV. gave rise, we need only say, that they combine the dulness of the metaphysical courtship with all the improbabilities of the ancient Romance of Chivalry. Their character will be most easily learned from Boileau's Dramatic Satire, or Mrs Lennox's Female Quixote.]

  Lady Margaret, herself somewhat attached to the perusal of romances, tookup the cudgels. "Monsieur Scuderi," she said, "is a soldier, brother;and, as I have heard, a complete one, and so is the Sieur d'Urfe."

  "More shame for them; they should have known better what they werewriting about. For my part, I have not read a book these twenty yearsexcept my Bible, The Whole Duty of Man, and, of late days, Turner'sPallas Armata, or Treatise on the Ordering of the Pike Exercise, and Idon't like his discipline much neither.

  [Note: Sir James Turner. Sir James Turner was a soldier of fortune, bred in the civil wars. He was intrusted with a commission to levy the fines imposed by the Privy Council for non-conformity, in the district of Dumfries and Galloway. In this capacity he vexed the country so much by his exactions, that the people rose and made him prisoner, and then proceeded in arms towards Mid-Lothian, where they were defeated at Pentland Hills, in 1666. Besides his treatise on the Military Art, Sir James Turner wrote several other works; the most curious of which is his Memoirs of his own Life and Times, which has just been printed, under the charge of the Bannatyne Club.]

  He wants to draw up the cavalry in front of a stand of pikes, instead ofbeing upon the wings. Sure am I, if we had done so at Kilsythe, insteadof having our handful of horse on the flanks, the first discharge wouldhave sent them back among our Highlanders.--But I hear the kettle-drums."

  All heads were now bent from the battlements of the turret, whichcommanded a distant prospect down the vale of the river. The Tower ofTillietudlem stood, or perhaps yet stands, upon the angle of a veryprecipitous bank, formed by the junction of a considerable brook with theClyde.

  [Note: The Castle of Tillietudlem is imaginary; but the ruins of Craignethan Castle, situated on the Nethan, about three miles from its junction with the Clyde, have something of the character of the description in the text].

  There was a narrow bridge of one steep arch, across the brook near itsmouth, over which, and along the foot of the high and broken bank, windedthe public road; and the fortalice, thus commanding both bridge and pass,had been, in times of war, a post of considerable importance, thepossession of which was necessary to secure the communication of theupper and wilder districts of the country with those beneath, where thevalley expands, and is more capable of cultivation. The view downwards isof a grand woodland character; but the level ground and gentle slopesnear the river form cultivated fields of an irregular shape, interspersedwith hedgerow-trees and copses, the enclosures seeming to have beenindividually cleared out of the forest which surrounds them, and whichoccupies, in unbroken masses, the steeper declivities and more distantbanks. The stream, in colour a clear and sparkling brown, like the hue ofthe Cairngorm pebbles, rushes through this romantic region in bold sweepsand curves, partly visible and partly concealed by the trees which clotheits banks. With a providence unknown in other parts of Scotland, thepeasants have, in most places, planted orchards around their cottages,and the general blossom of the appletrees at this season of the year gaveall the lower part of the view the appearance of a flower-garden.

  Looking up the river, the character of the scene was varied considerablyfor the worse. A hilly, waste, and uncultivated country approached closeto the banks; the trees were few, and limited to the neighbourhood of thestream, and the rude moors swelled at a little distance into shapelessand heavy hills, which were again surmounted in their turn by a range oflofty mountains, dimly seen on the horizon. Thus the tower commanded twoprospects, the one richly cultivated and highly adorned, the otherexhibiting the monotonous and dreary character of a wild and inhospitablemoorland.

  The eyes of the spectators on the present occasion were attracted to thedownward view, not alone by its superior beauty, but because the distantsounds of military music began to be heard from the public high-roadwhich winded up the vale, and announced the approach of the expected bodyof cavalry. Their glimmering ranks were shortly afterwards seen in thedistance, appearing and disappearing as the trees and the windings of theroad permitted them to be visible, and distinguished chiefly by theflashes of light which their arms occasionally reflected against the sun.The train was long and imposing, for there were about two hundred andfifty horse upon the march, and the glancing of the swords and waving oftheir banners, joined to the clang of their trumpets and kettle-drums,had at once a lively and awful effect upon the imagination. As theyadvanced still nearer and nearer, they could distinctly see the files ofthose chosen troops following each other in long succession, completelyequipped and superbly mounted.

  "It's a sight that makes me thirty years younger," said the old cavalier;"and yet I do not much like the service that these poor fellows are to beengaged in. Although I had my share of the civil war, I cannot say I hadever so much real pleasure in that sort of service as when I was employedon the Continent, and we were hacking at fellows with foreign faces andoutlandish dialect. It's a hard thing to hear a hamely Scotch tongue cryquarter, and be obliged to cut him down just the same as if he called out_misricorde_.--So, there they come through the Netherwood haugh; upon myword, fine-looking fellows, and capitally mounted.--He that is galloppingfrom the rear of the column must be Claver'se himself;--ay, he gets intothe front as they cross the bridge, and now they will be with us in lessthan five minutes."

  Edith on the Battlements--frontispiece]

  At the bridge beneath the tower the cavalry divided, and the greaterpart, moving up the left bank of the brook and crossing at a ford alittle above, took the road of the Grange, as it was called, a large setof farm-offices belonging to the Tower, where Lady Margaret had orderedpreparation to be made for their reception and suitable entertainment.The officers alone, with their colours and an escort to guard them, wereseen to take the steep road up to the gate of the Tower, appearing byintervals as they gained the ascent, and again hidden by projections ofthe bank and of the huge old trees with which it is covered. When theyemerged from this narrow path, they found themselves in front of the oldTower, the gates of which were hospitably open for their reception. LadyMargaret, with Edith and her brother-in-law, having hastily descendedfrom their post of observation, appeared to meet and to welcome theirguests, with a retinue of domestics in as good order as the orgies of thepreceding evening permitted. The gallant young cornet (a relation as wellas namesake of Claverhouse, with whom the reader has been already madeacquainted) lowered the standard amid the fanfare of the trumpets, inhomage to the rank of Lady Margaret and the charms of her grand-daughter,and the old walls echoed to the flourish of the instruments, and thestamp and ne
igh of the chargers.

  [Note: John Grahame of Claverhouse. This remarkable person united the seemingly inconsistent qualities of courage and cruelty, a disinterested and devoted loyalty to his prince, with a disregard of the rights of his fellow-subjects. He was the unscrupulous agent of the Scottish Privy Council in executing the merciless severities of the government in Scotland during the reigns of Charles II. and James II.; but he redeemed his character by the zeal with which he asserted the cause of the latter monarch after the Revolution, the military skill with which he supported it at the battle of Killiecrankie, and by his own death in the arms of victory.

  It is said by tradition, that he was very desirous to see, and be introduced to, a certain Lady Elphinstoun, who had reached the advanced age of one hundred years and upwards. The noble matron, being a stanch whig, was rather unwilling to receive Claver'se, (as he was called from his title,) but at length consented. After the usual compliments, the officer observed to the lady, that having lived so much beyond the usual term of humanity, she must in her time have seen many strange changes. "Hout na, sir," said Lady Elphinstoun, "the world is just to end with me as it began. When I was entering life, there was ane Knox deaving us a' wi' his clavers, and now I am ganging out, there is ane Claver'se deaving us a' wi' his knocks."

  Clavers signifying, in common parlance, idle chat, the double pun does credit to the ingenuity of a lady of a hundred years old.]

  Claverhouse himself alighted from a black horse, the most beautifulperhaps in Scotland. He had not a single white hair upon his whole body,a circumstance which, joined to his spirit and fleetness, and to hisbeing so frequently employed in pursuit of the presbyterian recusants,caused an opinion to prevail among them, that the steed had beenpresented to his rider by the great Enemy of Mankind, in order to assisthim in persecuting the fugitive wanderers. When Claverhouse had paid hisrespects to the ladies with military politeness, had apologized for thetrouble to which he was putting Lady Margaret's family, and had receivedthe corresponding assurances that she could not think any thing aninconvenience which brought within the walls of Tillietudlem sodistinguished a soldier, and so loyal a servant of his sacred majesty;when, in short, all forms of hospitable and polite ritual had been dulycomplied with, the Colonel requested permission to receive the report ofBothwell, who was now in attendance, and with whom he spoke apart for afew minutes. Major Bellenden took that opportunity to say to his niece,without the hearing of her grandmother, "What a trifling foolish girl youare, Edith, to send me by express a letter crammed with nonsense aboutbooks and gowns, and to slide the only thing I cared a marvedie aboutinto the postscript!"

  "I did not know," said Edith, hesitating very much, "whether it would bequite--quite proper for me to"--"I know what you would say--whether itwould be right to take any interest in a presbyterian. But I knew thislad's father well. He was a brave soldier; and, if he was once wrong, hewas once right too. I must commend your caution, Edith, for having saidnothing of this young gentleman's affair to your grandmother--you mayrely on it I shall not--I will take an opportunity to speak to Claver'se.Come, my love, they are going to breakfast. Let us follow them."