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 regard them,somewhat overawed his companion, and deterred him from making anyattempts to enter upon conversation. His own reflections were moreoveragitated 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 partof the 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 for thecasualties whilk may befall the puir naig while in your honour'sservice. Nathless, if your honour--'
'O, 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, avillage 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 speedilydistinguished the smith's house. Being also a public, it was twostories high, and proudly reared its crest, covered with grey slate,above the thatched hovels by which it was surrounded. The adjoiningsmithy betokened none of the Sabbatical silence and repose whichEbenezer had augured from the sanctity of his friend. On the contrary,hammer clashed and anvil rang, the bellows groaned, and the wholeapparatus of Vulcan appeared to be in full activity. Nor was the labourof a rural and pacific nature. The master smith, benempt, as his signintimated, John Mucklewrath, with two assistants, toiled busily inarranging, repairing, and furbishing old muskets, pistols, and swords,which lay scattered around his workshop in military confusion. The openshed, containing the forge, was crowded with persons who came and wentas if receiving and communicating important news, and a single glanceat the aspect of the people who traversed the street in haste, or stoodassembled in groups, with eyes elevated and hands uplifted, announcedthat some extraordinary intelligence was agitating the public mind ofthe municipality of Cairnvreckan. 'There is some news,' said mine hostof the Candlestick, pushing his lantern-jawed visage and bare-boned nagrudely forward into the crowd--'there is some news; and, if it pleasemy Creator, I will forthwith 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 thetrouble of interrogatories. The names of Lochiel, Clanronald,Glengarry, and other distinguished Highland Chiefs, among whom Vich IanVohr was repeatedly mentioned, were as familiar in men's mouths ashousehold words; and from the alarm generally expressed, he easilyconceived that their descent into the Lowlands, at the head of theirarmed tribes, had either already taken place or was instantlyapprehended.
Ere Waverley could ask particulars, a strong, large-boned,hard-featured woman, about forty, dressed as if her clothes had beenflung on with a pitchfork, her cheeks flushed with a scarlet red wherethey were not smutted with soot and lamp-black, jostled through thecrowd, and, brandishing high a child of two years old, which she dancedin her arms without regard to its screams of terror, sang forth withall her might,--
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, 'yewhingeing Whig 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,' reechoed 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 stand therehammering 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 eyes rested on him with a look of displeasure andsuspicion, not lessened by the eagerness with which his wife enforcedWaverley's mandate. 'D'ye hear what the weel-favoured young gentlemansays, ye drunken 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 oldfarmer, smelling strongly of whisky and peat-smoke; 'and I doubt wemaun delay your 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--'SecretaryMurray'--'Lord Lewis Gordon'--'Maybe the Chevalier himsell!' Such werethe surmises that passed hurriedly among them, and there was obviouslyan increased disposition to resist Waverley's departure. He attemptedto argue mildly with them, but his voluntary ally, Mrs. Mucklewrath,broke in upon and drowned his expostulations, taking his part with anabusive violence which was all set down to Edward's account by those onwhom it was bestowed. 'YE'LL stop ony gentleman that's the Prince'sfreend?' for she too, though with other feelings, had adopted thegeneral opinion respecting Waverley. 'I daur ye to touch him,'spreading abroad her long and muscular fingers, garnished with clawswhich a vulture might have envied. 'I'll set my ten commandments in theface o' the first loon that lays a finger on him.'
'Gae hame, gudewife,' quoth th
e farmer aforesaid; 'it wad better setyou to 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 wad 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 ofthe anvil. 'Deil be in me but I'll put this het gad down her throat!'cried he in an ecstasy of wrath, snatching a bar from the forge; and hemight have executed his threat, had he not been withheld by a part ofthe mob, while the rest endeavoured to force the termagant out of hispresence.
Waverley meditated a retreat in the confusion, but his horse wasnowhere to 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 theafternoon preaching.'
Edward, out of patience, hemmed in and hustled by the rabble on everyside, and every moment expecting personal violence, resolved to trymeasures 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 himwith the red-hot bar of iron with such determination as made thedischarge of his pistol an act of self-defence. The unfortunate manfell; and while Edward, thrilled with a natural horror at the incident,neither had presence of mind to unsheathe his sword nor to draw hisremaining pistol, the populace threw themselves upon him, disarmed him,and were about to use him with great violence, when the appearance of avenerable clergyman, 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 offaith and practice in his doctrine that, although his memory has formeda sort of era in the annals of Cairnvreckan, so that the parishioners,to denote what befell Sixty Years Since, still say it happened 'in goodMr. Morton's time,' I have never been able to discover which hebelonged to, the evangelical or the moderate party in the kirk. Nor doI hold the circumstance of much moment, since, in my own remembrance,the one was headed by an Erskine, the other by a Robertson.
[Footnote: The Reverend John Erskine, D. D, an eminent Scottish divineand a most excellent man, headed the Evangelical party in the Church ofScotland at the time when the celebrated Doctor Robertson, thehistorian, was the leader of the Moderate party. These twodistinguished persons were colleagues in the Old Grey Friars' Church,Edinburgh; and, however much they differed in church politics,preserved the most perfect harmony as private friends and as clergymenserving 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 frominjuring him, was turned to the body of Mucklewrath, over which hiswife, in a revulsion of feeling, was weeping, howling, and tearing herelf-locks in a state little short of distraction. On raising up thesmith, the first discovery was that he was alive; and the next that hewas likely to live as long as if he had never heard the report of apistol in his life. He had made a narrow escape, however; the bullethad grazed his head and stunned him for a moment or two, which tranceterror and confusion of spirit had prolonged somewhat longer. He nowarose to demand vengeance on the person of Waverley, and withdifficulty acquiesced in the proposal of Mr. Morton that he should becarried before the Laird, as a justice of peace, and placed at hisdisposal. The rest of the assistants unanimously agreed to the measurerecommended; even Mrs. Mucklewrath, who had begun to recover from herhysterics, whimpered forth, 'She wadna say naething against what theminister proposed; he was e'en ower gude for his trade, and she hopedto see him wi' a dainty decent bishop's gown on his back; a comeliersight than your 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 tothe house of Cairnvreckan, which was about half a mile distant.