Red Cap Tales | Page 8

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 C?sar, 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