CHAPTER XXXII
A CONFERENCE AND THE CONSEQUENCE
Major Melville had detained Mr. Morton during his examination ofWaverley, both because he thought he might derive assistance from hispractical good sense and approved loyalty, and also because it wasagreeable to have a witness of unimpeached candour and veracity toproceedings which touched the honour and safety of a young Englishmanof high rank and family, and the expectant heir of a large fortune.Every step he knew would be rigorously canvassed, and it was hisbusiness to place the justice and integrity of his own conduct beyondthe limits of question.
When Waverley retired, the laird and clergyman of Cairnvreckan sat downin silence to their evening meal. While the servants were in attendanceneither chose to say anything on the circumstances which occupied theirminds, and neither felt it easy to speak upon any other. The youth andapparent frankness of Waverley stood in strong contrast to the shadesof suspicion which darkened around him, and he had a sort of naiveteand openness of demeanour that seemed to belong to one unhackneyed inthe ways of intrigue, and which pleaded highly in his favour.
Each mused over the particulars of the examination, and each viewed itthrough the medium of his own feelings. Both were men of ready andacute talent, and both were equally competent to combine various partsof evidence, and to deduce from them the necessary conclusions. But thewide difference of their habits and education often occasioned a greatdiscrepancy in their respective deductions from admitted premises.
Major Melville had been versed in camps and cities; he was vigilant byprofession and cautious from experience, had met with much evil in theworld, and therefore, though himself an upright magistrate and anhonourable man, his opinions of others were always strict, andsometimes unjustly severe. Mr. Morton, on the contrary, had passed fromthe literary pursuits of a college, where he was beloved by hiscompanions and respected by his teachers, to the ease and simplicity ofhis present charge, where his opportunities of witnessing evil werefew, and never dwelt upon but in order to encourage repentance andamendment; and where the love and respect of his parishioners repaidhis affectionate zeal in their behalf by endeavouring to disguise fromhim what they knew would give him the most acute pain, namely, theirown occasional transgressions of the duties which it was the businessof his life to recommend. Thus it was a common saying in theneighbourhood (though both were popular characters), that the lairdknew only the ill in the parish and the minister only the good.
A love of letters, though kept in subordination to his clerical studiesand duties, also distinguished the pastor of Cairnvreckan, and hadtinged his mind in earlier days with a slight feeling of romance, whichno after incidents of real life had entirely dissipated. The early lossof an amiable young woman whom he had married for love, and who wasquickly followed to the grave by an only child, had also served, evenafter the lapse of many years, to soften a disposition naturally mildand contemplative. His feelings on the present occasion were thereforelikely to differ from those of the severe disciplinarian, strictmagistrate, and distrustful man of the world.
When the servants had withdrawn, the silence of both parties continued,until Major Melville, filling his glass and pushing the bottle to Mr.Morton, commenced--
'A distressing affair this, Mr. Morton. I fear this youngster hasbrought himself within the compass of a halter.'
'God forbid!' answered the clergyman.
'Marry, and amen,' said the temporal magistrate; 'but I think even yourmerciful logic will hardly deny the conclusion.'
'Surely, Major,' answered the clergyman, 'I should hope it might beaverted, for aught we have heard tonight?'
'Indeed!' replied Melville. 'But, my good parson, you are one of thosewho would communicate to every criminal the benefit of clergy.'
'Unquestionably I would. Mercy and long-suffering are the grounds ofthe doctrine I am called to teach.'
'True, religiously speaking; but mercy to a criminal may be grossinjustice to the community. I don't speak of this young fellow inparticular, who I heartily wish may be able to clear himself, for Ilike both his modesty and his spirit. But I fear he has rushed upon hisfate.'
'And why? Hundreds of misguided gentlemen are now in arms against thegovernment, many, doubtless, upon principles which education and earlyprejudice have gilded with the names of patriotism and heroism;Justice, when she selects her victims from such a multitude (for surelyall will not be destroyed), must regard the moral motive. He whomambition or hope of personal advantage has led to disturb the peace ofa well-ordered government, let him fall a victim to the laws; butsurely youth, misled by the wild visions of chivalry and imaginaryloyalty, may plead for pardon.'
'If visionary chivalry and imaginary loyalty come within thepredicament of high treason,' replied the magistrate, 'I know no courtin Christendom, my dear Mr. Morton, where they can sue out their HabeasCorpus.'
'But I cannot see that this youth's guilt is at all established to mysatisfaction,' said the clergyman.
'Because your good-nature blinds your good sense,' replied MajorMelville. 'Observe now: This young man, descended of a family ofhereditary Jacobites, his uncle the leader of the Tory interest in thecounty of ----, his father a disobliged and discontented courtier, histutor a nonjuror and the author of two treasonable volumes--this youth,I say, enters into Gardiner's dragoons, bringing with him a body ofyoung fellows from his uncle's estate, who have not stickled at avowingin their way the High-Church principles they learned atWaverley-Honour, in their disputes with their comrades. To these youngmen Waverley is unusually attentive; they are supplied with moneybeyond a soldier's wants and inconsistent with his discipline; and areunder the management of a favourite sergeant, through whom they hold anunusually close communication with their captain, and affect toconsider themselves as independent of the other officers, and superiorto their comrades.'
'All this, my dear Major, is the natural consequence of theirattachment to their young landlord, and of their finding themselves ina regiment levied chiefly in the north of Ireland and the west ofScotland, and of course among comrades disposed to quarrel with them,both as Englishmen and as members of the Church of England.'
'Well said, parson!' replied the magistrate. 'I would some of yoursynod heard you. But let me go on. This young man obtains leave ofabsence, goes to Tully-Veolan--the principles of the Baron ofBradwardine are pretty well known, not to mention that this lad's unclebrought him off in the year fifteen; he engages there in a brawl, inwhich he is said to have disgraced the commission he bore; ColonelGardiner writes to him, first mildly, then more sharply--I think youwill not doubt his having done so, since he says so; the mess invitehim to explain the quarrel in which he is said to have been involved;he neither replies to his commander nor his comrades. In the meanwhilehis soldiers become mutinous and disorderly, and at length, when therumour of this unhappy rebellion becomes general, his favouriteSergeant Houghton and another fellow are detected in correspondencewith a French emissary, accredited, as he says, by Captain Waverley,who urges him, according to the men's confession, to desert with thetroop and join their captain, who was with Prince Charles. In themeanwhile this trusty captain is, by his own admission, residing atGlennaquoich with the most active, subtle, and desperate Jacobite inScotland; he goes with him at least as far as their famous huntingrendezvous, and I fear a little farther. Meanwhile two other summonsesare sent him; one warning him of the disturbances in his troop, anotherperemptorily ordering him to repair to the regiment, which, indeed,common sense might have dictated, when he observed rebellion thickeningall round him. He returns an absolute refusal, and throws up hiscommission.'
'He had been already deprived of it,' said Mr. Morton.
'But he regrets,' replied Melville, 'that the measure had anticipatedhis resignation. His baggage is seized at his quarters and atTully-Veolan, and is found to contain a stock of pestilent Jacobiticalpamphlets, enough to poison a whole country, besides the unprintedlucubrations of his worthy friend and tutor Mr. Pembroke.'
'H
e says he never read them,' answered the minister.
'In an ordinary case I should believe him,' replied the magistrate,'for they are as stupid and pedantic in composition as mischievous intheir tenets. But can you suppose anything but value for the principlesthey maintain would induce a young man of his age to lug such trashabout with him? Then, when news arrive of the approach of the rebels,he sets out in a sort of disguise, refusing to tell his name; and, ifyon old fanatic tell truth, attended by a very suspicious character,and mounted on a horse known to have belonged to Glennaquoich, andbearing on his person letters from his family expressing high rancouragainst the house of Brunswick, and a copy of verses in praise of oneWogan, who abjured the service of the Parliament to join the Highlandinsurgents, when in arms to restore the house of Stuart, with a body ofEnglish cavalry--the very counterpart of his own plot--and summed upwith a "Go thou and do likewise" from that loyal subject, and most safeand peaceable character, Fergus Mac-Ivor of Glennaquoich, Vich IanVohr, and so forth. And, lastly,' continued Major Melville, warming inthe detail of his arguments, 'where do we find this second edition ofCavalier Wogan? Why, truly, in the very track most proper for executionof his design, and pistolling the first of the king's subjects whoventures to question his intentions.'
Mr. Morton prudently abstained from argument, which he perceived wouldonly harden the magistrate in his opinion, and merely asked how heintended to dispose of the prisoner?
'It is a question of some difficulty, considering the state of thecountry,' said Major Melville.
'Could you not detain him (being such a gentleman-like young man) herein your own house, out of harm's way, till this storm blow over?'
'My good friend,' said Major Melville, 'neither your house nor minewill be long out of harm's way, even were it legal to confine him here.I have just learned that the commander-in-chief, who marched into theHighlands to seek out and disperse the insurgents, has declined givingthem battle at Coryarrick, and marched on northward with all thedisposable force of government to Inverness, John-o'-Groat's House, orthe devil, for what I know, leaving the road to the Low Country openand undefended to the Highland army.'
'Good God!' said the clergyman. 'Is the man a coward, a traitor, or anidiot?'
'None of the three, I believe,' answered Melville. 'Sir John has thecommonplace courage of a common soldier, is honest enough, does what heis commanded, and understands what is told him, but is as fit to actfor himself in circumstances of importance as I, my dear parson, tooccupy your pulpit.'
This important public intelligence naturally diverted the discoursefrom Waverley for some time; at length, however, the subject wasresumed.
'I believe,' said Major Melville, 'that I must give this young man incharge to some of the detached parties of armed volunteers who werelately sent out to overawe the disaffected districts. They are nowrecalled towards Stirling, and a small body comes this way to-morrow ornext day, commanded by the westland man--what's his name? You saw him,and said he was the very model of one of Cromwell's military saints.'
'Gilfillan, the Cameronian,' answered Mr. Morton. 'I wish the younggentleman may be safe with him. Strange things are done in the heat andhurry of minds in so agitating a crisis, and I fear Gilfillan is of asect which has suffered persecution without learning mercy.'
'He has only to lodge Mr. Waverley in Stirling Castle,' said the Major;'I will give strict injunctions to treat him well. I really cannotdevise any better mode for securing him, and I fancy you would hardlyadvise me to encounter the responsibility of setting him at liberty.'
'But you will have no objection to my seeing him tomorrow in private?'said the minister.
'None, certainly; your loyalty and character are my warrant. But withwhat view do you make the request?'
'Simply,' replied Mr. Morton, 'to make the experiment whether he maynot be brought to communicate to me some circumstances which mayhereafter be useful to alleviate, if not to exculpate, his conduct.'
The friends now parted and retired to rest, each filled with the mostanxious reflections on the state of the country.