On the Old Road Volume Ii Part 30

"There stands our captain," said one of them, as a strong party of English came up, the vanguard of Foster's troop.

"Your captain! with his sword sheathed, and on foot in the presence of his enemy? a raw soldier, I warrant him," said the English leader. "So!

ho! young man, is your dream out, and will you now answer me if you will fight or fly?"

"Neither," answered Halbert Glendinning, with great tranquillity.

"Then throw down thy sword and yield thee," answered the Englishman.

"Not till I can help myself no otherwise," said Halbert, with the same moderation of tone and manner.

"Art thou for thine own hand, friend, or to whom dost thou owe service?"

demanded the English captain.

"To the n.o.ble Earl of Murray."

"Then thou servest," said the Southron, "the most disloyal n.o.bleman who breathes--false both to England and Scotland."

"Thou liest," said Glendinning, regardless of all consequences.

"Ha! art thou so hot now, and wert so cold but a minute since? I lie, do I? Wilt thou do battle with me on that quarrel?"

"With one to one, one to two, or two to five, as you list," said Halbert Glendinning; "grant me but a fair field."

"That thou shalt have. Stand back, my mates," said the brave Englishman. "If I fall, give him fair play, and let him go off free with his people."

"Long life to the n.o.ble captain!" cried the soldiers, as impatient to see the duel as if it had been a bull.

"He will have a short life of it, though," said the sergeant, "if he, an old man of sixty, is to fight for any reason, or for no reason, with every man he meets, and especially the young fellows he might be father to. And here comes the warden, besides, to see the sword-play."

In fact, Sir John Foster came up with a considerable body of his hors.e.m.e.n, just as his captain, whose age rendered him unequal to the combat with so strong and active a youth as Glendinning, lost his sword.[102]

"Take it up for shame, old Stawarth Bolton," said the English warden; "and thou, young man, get you gone to your own friends, and loiter not here."

Notwithstanding this peremptory order, Halbert Glendinning could not help stopping to cast a look upon the unfortunate Catherine, who lay insensible of the danger and of the trampling of so many horses around her--insensible, as the second glance a.s.sured him, of all and forever.

Glendinning almost rejoiced when he saw that the last misery of life was over, and that the hoofs of the war-horses, amongst which he was compelled to leave her, could only injure and deface a senseless corpse.

He caught the infant from her arms, half ashamed of the shout of laughter which rose on all sides, at seeing an armed man in such a situation a.s.sume such an unwonted and inconvenient burden.

"Shoulder your infant!" cried a harquebusier.

"Port your infant!" said a pikeman.

"Peace, ye brutes!" said Stawarth Bolton, "and respect humanity in others, if you have none yourselves. I pardon the lad having done some discredit to my gray hairs, when I see him take care of that helpless creature, which ye would have trampled upon as if ye had been littered of b.i.t.c.h-wolves, not born of women."

The infant thus saved is the heir of Avenel, and the intricacy and fateful bearing of every incident and word in the scene, knitting into one central moment all the clews to the plot of two romances, as the rich boss of a Gothic vault gathers the shaft moldings of it, can only be felt by an entirely attentive reader; just as (to follow out the likeness on Scott's own ground) the willow-wreaths changed to stone of Melrose tracery can only be caught in their plighting by the keenest eyes. The meshes are again gathered by the master's own hand when the child now in Halbert's arms, twenty years hence, stoops over him to unlace his helmet, as the fallen knight lies senseless on the field of Carberry Hill.[103]

112. But there is another, and a still more hidden method in Scott's designing of story, in which, taking extreme pains, he counts on much sympathy from the reader, and can a.s.suredly find none in a modern student. The moral purpose of the whole, which he a.s.serted in the preface to the first edition of Waverley, was involved always with the minutest study of the effects of true and false religion on the conduct;--which subject being always touched with his utmost lightness of hand and stealthiness of art, and founded on a knowledge of the Scotch character and the human heart, such as no other living man possessed, his purpose often escapes first observation as completely as the inner feelings of living people do; and I am myself amazed, as I take any single piece of his work up for examination, to find how many of its points I had before missed or disregarded.

113. The groups of personages whose conduct in the Scott romance is definitely affected by religious conviction, may be arranged broadly, as those of the actual world, under these following heads:

1. The lowest group consists of persons who, believing in the general truths of Evangelical religion, accommodate them to their pa.s.sions, and are capable, by gradual increase in depravity, of any crime or violence.

I am not going to include these in our present study. Trumbull ("Red Gauntlet"), Trusty Tomkyns ("Woodstock"), Burley ("Old Mortality"), are three of the princ.i.p.al types.

2. The next rank above these consists of men who believe firmly and truly enough to be restrained from any conduct which they clearly recognize as criminal, but whose natural selfishness renders them incapable of understanding the morality of the Bible above a certain point; and whose imperfect powers of thought leave them liable in many directions to the warping of self-interest or of small temptations.

Fairservice. Blattergowl. Kettledrummle. Gifted Gilfillan.

3. The third order consists of men naturally just and honest, but with little sympathy and much pride, in whom their religion, while in the depth of it supporting their best virtues, brings out on the surface all their worst faults, and makes them censorious, tiresome, and often fearfully mischievous.

Richie Moniplies. Davie Deans. Mause Hedrigg.

4. The enthusiastic type, leading to missionary effort, often to martyrdom.

Warden, in "Monastery." Colonel Gardiner. Ephraim Macbriar. Joshua Geddes.

5. Highest type, fulfilling daily duty; always gentle, entirely firm, the comfort and strength of all around them; merciful to every human fault, and submissive without anger to every human oppression.

Rachel Geddes. Jeanie Deans. Bessie Maclure, in "Old Mortality"--the Queen of all.

114. In the present paper, I ask the reader's patience only with my fulfillment of a promise long since made, to mark the opposition of the effects of an entirely similar religious faith in two men of inferior position, representing in perfectness the commonest types in Scotland of the second and third order of religionists here distinguished, Andrew Fairservice ("Rob Roy"), and Richie Moniplies ("Nigel").

The names of both the men imply deceitfulness of one kind or another--Fairservice, as serving fairly only in pretense; Moniplies, as having many windings, turns, and ways of escape. Scott's names are themselves so Moniplied that they need as much following out as Shakespeare's; and as their roots are pure Scotch, and few people have a good Scottish glossary beside them, or would use it if they had, the novels are usually read without any turning of the first keys to them. I did not myself know till very lately the root of Dandie Dinmont's name--"Dinmont," a two-year-old sheep; still less that of Moniplies, which I had been always content to take Master George Heriot's rendering of: "This fellow is not ill-named--he has more plies than one in his cloak." ("Nigel," i. 72.) In its first sense, it is the Scotch word for tripe, Moniplies being a butcher's son.

115. Cunning, then, they both are, in a high degree--but Fairservice only for himself, Moniplies for himself and his friend; or, in grave business, even for his friend first. But it is one of Scott's first principles of moral law that cunning never shall succeed, unless definitely employed _against an enemy_ by a person whose essential character is wholly frank and true; as by Roland against Lady Lochleven, or Mysie Happer against Dan of the Howlet-hirst; but consistent cunning in the character always fails: Scott allows no Ulyssean hero.

Therefore the cunning of Fairservice fails always, and totally; but that of Moniplies precisely according to the degree of its selfishness: wholly, in the affair of the pet.i.tion--("I am sure I had a' the right and a' the risk," i. 73)--partially, in that of the carcanet. This he himself at last recognizes with complacency:--

"I think you might have left me," says Nigel in their parting scene (i.

286), "to act according to my own judgment."

"Mickle better not," answered Richie; "mickle better not. We are a'

frail creatures, and can judge better for ilk ither than in our own cases. And for me--even myself--I have always observed myself to be much more prudential in what I have done in your lordship's behalf, than even in what I have been able to transact for my own interest--whilk last, I have, indeed, always postponed, as in duty I ought."

"I do believe thou hast," answered Lord Nigel, "having ever found thee true and faithful."

And his final success is entirely owing to his courage and fidelity, not to his cunning.

To this subtlety both the men join considerable power of penetration into the weaknesses of character; but Fairservice only sees the surface-failings, and has no respect for any kind of n.o.bleness; while Richie watches the gradual lowering of his master's character and reputation with earnest sorrow.

"My lord," said Richie, "to be round with you, the grace of G.o.d is better than gold pieces, and, if they were my last words," he said, raising his voice, "I would say you are misled, and are forsaking the paths your honorable father trode in; and what is more, you are going--still under correction--to the devil with a dishclout, for ye are laughed at by them that lead you into these disordered bypaths" (i. 282).

116. In the third place, note that the penetration of Moniplies,--though, as aforesaid, more into faults than virtues,--being yet founded on the truth of his own nature, is undeceivable. No rogue can escape him for an instant; and he sees through all the machinations of Lord Glenvarloch's enemies from the first; while Fairservice, shrewd enough in detecting the follies of good people, is quite helpless before knaves, and is deceived three times over by his own chosen friends--first by the lawyer's clerk, Touthope (ii. 21), then by the hypocrite MacVittie, and finally by his true blue Presbyterian friend Laurie.

In these first elements of character the men are thus broadly distinguished; but in the next, requiring a.n.a.lysis, the differences are much more subtle. Both of them have, in nearly equal degree, the peculiar love of doing or saying what is provoking, by an exact contrariety to the wishes of the person they are dealing with, which is a fault inherent in the rough side of uneducated Scottish character; but in Andrew, the habit is checked by his self-interest, so that it is only behind his master's back that we hear his opinion of him; and only when he has lost his temper that the inherent provocativeness comes out--(see the dark ride into Scotland).

On the contrary, Moniplies never speaks but in praise of his _absent_ master; but exults in mortifying him in direct colloquy: yet never indulges this amiable disposition except with a really kind purpose, and entirely knowing what he is about. Fairservice, on the other hand, gradually falls into an unconscious fatality of varied blunder and provocation; and at last causes the entire catastrophe of the story by bringing in the candles when he has been ordered to stay downstairs.

117. We have next to remember that with Scott, Truth and Courage are one. He somewhat overvalued _animal_ courage--holding it the basis of all other virtue--in his own words, "Without courage there can be no truth, and without truth no virtue." He would, however, sometimes allow his villains to possess the basis, without the super-structure, and thus Rashleigh, Dalgarno, Balfour, Varney, and other men of that stamp are to be carefully distinguished from his erring _heroes_, Marmion, Bertram, Christie of the Clinthill, or Nanty Ewart, in whom loyalty is always the real strength of the character, and the faults of life are owing to temporary pa.s.sion or evil fate. Scott differs in this standard of heroism materially from Byron,[104] in whose eyes mere courage, with strong affections, are enough for admiration: while Bertram, and even Marmion, though loyal to his country, are meant only to be pitied--not honored. But neither Scott nor Byron will ever allow any grain of mercy to a coward; and the final difference, therefore, between Fairservice and Moniplies, which decides their fate in Scott's hands, is that between their courage and cowardice. Fairservice is driven out at the kitchen door, never to be heard of more, while Richie rises into Sir Richie of Castle-Collop--the reader may perhaps at the moment think by too careless grace on the King's part; which, indeed, Scott in some measure meant;--but the grotesqueness and often evasiveness of Richie's common manner make us forget how surely his bitter word is backed by his ready blow, when need is. His first introduction to us (i. 33), is because his quick temper overcomes his caution,--