Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since — Volume 2. Вальтер СкоттЧитать онлайн книгу.
tartans; for, though Waverley be always a young fellow of sense and honour, I have hitherto often found him a very absent and inattentive companion.'
'We are the more obliged to him,' said the Prince, 'for having reserved for this evening qualities which even such intimate friends had not discovered. But come, gentlemen, the night advances, and the business of tomorrow must be early thought upon. Each take charge of his fair partner, and honour a small refreshment with your company.'
He led the way to another suite of apartments, and assumed the seat and canopy at the head of a long range of tables with an air of dignity, mingled with courtesy, which well became his high birth and lofty pretensions. An hour had hardly flown away when the musicians played the signal for parting so well known in Scotland. [Footnote: Which is, or was wont to be, the old air of 'Good-night and joy be wi' you a'.]
'Good-night, then,' said the Chevalier, rising; 'goodnight, and joy be with you! Good-night, fair ladies, who have so highly honoured a proscribed and banished Prince! Good-night, my brave friends; may the happiness we have this evening experienced be an omen of our return to these our paternal halls, speedily and in triumph, and of many and many future meetings of mirth and pleasure in the palace of Holyrood!'
When the Baron of Bradwardine afterwards mentioned this adieu of the Chevalier, he never failed to repeat, in a melancholy tone,
'Audiit, et voti Phoebus succedere partem
Mente dedit; partem volucres dispersit in auras;
which,' as he added, 'is weel rendered into English metre by my friend Bangour: —
Ae half the prayer wi' Phoebus grace did find,
The t'other half he whistled down the wind.'
CHAPTER XLIV
THE MARCH
The conflicting passions and exhausted feelings of Waverley had resigned him to late but sound repose. He was dreaming of Glennaquoich, and had transferred to the halls of lan nan Chaistel the festal train which so lately graced those of Holyrood. The pibroch too was distinctly heard; and this at least was no delusion, for the 'proud step of the chief piper' of the 'chlain MacIvor' was perambulating the court before the door of his Chieftain's quarters, and as Mrs. Flockhart, apparently no friend to his minstrelsy, was pleased to observe, 'garring the very stane-and-lime wa's dingle wi' his screeching.' Of course it soon became too powerful for Waverley's dream, with which it had at first rather harmonised.
The sound of Callum's brogues in his apartment (for Mac-Ivor had again assigned Waverley to his care) was the next note of parting. 'Winna yer honour bang up? Vich lan Vohr and ta Prince are awa to the lang green glen ahint the clachan, tat they ca' the King's Park, [Footnote: The main body of the Highland army encamped, or rather bivouacked, in that part of the King's Park which lies towards the village of Duddingston.] and mony ane's on his ain shanks the day that will be carried on ither folk's ere night.'
Waverley sprung up, and, with Callum's assistance and instructions, adjusted his tartans in proper costume. Callum told him also,' tat his leather dorlach wi' the lock on her was come frae Doune, and she was awa again in the wain wi' Vich Ian Vohr's walise.'
By this periphrasis Waverley readily apprehended his portmanteau was intended. He thought upon the mysterious packet of the maid of the cavern, which seemed always to escape him when within his very grasp. But this was no time for indulgence of curiosity; and having declined Mrs. Flockhart's compliment of a MORNING, i.e. a matutinal dram, being probably the only man in the Chevalier's army by whom such a courtesy would have been rejected, he made his adieus and departed with Callum.
'Callum,' said he, as they proceeded down a dirty close to gain the southern skirts of the Canongate, 'what shall I do for a horse?'
'Ta deil ane ye maun think o',' said Callum. 'Vich Ian Vohr's marching on foot at the head o' his kin (not to say ta Prince, wha does the like), wi' his target on his shoulder; and ye maun e'en be neighbour-like.'
'And so I will, Callum, give me my target; so, there we are fixed.
How does it look?'
'Like the bra' Highlander tat's painted on the board afore the mickle change-house they ca' Luckie Middlemass's,' answered Callum; meaning, I must observe, a high compliment, for in his opinion Luckie Middlemass's sign was an exquisite specimen of art. Waverley, however, not feeling the full force of this polite simile, asked him no further questions.
Upon extricating themselves from the mean and dirty suburbs of the metropolis, and emerging into the open air, Waverley felt a renewal of both health and spirits, and turned his recollection with firmness upon the events of the preceding evening, and with hope and resolution towards those of the approaching day.
When he had surmounted a small craggy eminence called St. Leonard's Hill, the King's Park, or the hollow between the mountain of Arthur's Seat and the rising grounds on which the southern part of Edinburgh is now built, lay beneath him, and displayed a singular and animating prospect. It was occupied by the army of the Highlanders, now in the act of preparing for their march. Waverley had already seen something of the kind at the hunting-match which he attended with Fergus MacIvor; but this was on a scale of much greater magnitude, and incomparably deeper interest. The rocks, which formed the background of the scene, and the very sky itself, rang with the clang of the bagpipers, summoning forth, each with his appropriate pibroch, his chieftain and clan. The mountaineers, rousing themselves from their couch under the canopy of heaven with the hum and bustle of a confused and irregular multitude, like bees alarmed and arming in their hives, seemed to possess all the pliability of movement fitted to execute military manoeuvres. Their motions appeared spontaneous and confused, but the result was order and regularity; so that a general must have praised the conclusion, though a martinet might have ridiculed the method by which it was attained.
The sort of complicated medley created by the hasty arrangements of the various clans under their respective banners, for the purpose of getting into the order of march, was in itself a gay and lively spectacle. They had no tents to strike having generally, and by choice, slept upon the open field, although the autumn was now waning and the nights began to be frosty. For a little space, while they were getting into order, there was exhibited a changing, fluctuating, and confused appearance of waving tartans and floating plumes, and of banners displaying the proud gathering word of Clanronald, Ganion Coheriga (Gainsay who dares), Loch-Sloy, the watchword of the MacFarlanes; Forth, fortune, and fill the fetters, the motto of the Marquis of Tullibardine; Bydand, that of Lord Lewis Gordon, and the appropriate signal words and emblems of many other chieftains and clans.
At length the mixed and wavering multitude arranged themselves into a narrow and dusky column of great length, stretching through the whole extent of the valley. In the front of the column the standard of the Chevalier was displayed, bearing a red cross upon a white ground, with the motto Tandem Triumphans. The few cavalry, being chiefly Lowland gentry, with their domestic servants and retainers, formed the advanced guard of the army; and their standards, of which they had rather too many in respect of their numbers, were seen waving upon the extreme verge of the horizon. Many horsemen of this body, among whom Waverley accidentally remarked Balmawhapple and his lieutenant, Jinker (which last, however, had been reduced, with several others, by the advice of the Baron of Bradwardine, to the situation of what he called reformed officers, or reformadoes), added to the liveliness, though by no means to the regularity, of the scene, by galloping their horses as fast forward as the press would permit, to join their proper station in the van. The fascinations of the Circes of the High Street, and the potations of strength with which they had been drenched over night, had probably detained these heroes within the walls of Edinburgh somewhat later than was consistent with their morning duty. Of such loiterers, the prudent took the longer and circuitous, but more open, route to attain their place in the march, by keeping at some distance from the infantry, and making their way through the inclosures to the right, at the expense of leaping over or pulling down the drystone fences. The irregular appearance and vanishing of these small parties of horsemen,