NEWS FROM ENGLAND
The letters which Waverley had hitherto received from his
relations in England were not such as required any particular
notice in this narrative. His father usually wrote to him with the
pompous affectation of one who was too much oppressed by public
affairs to find leisure to attend to those of his own family. Now
and then he mentioned persons of rank in Scotland to whom he
wished his son should pay some attention; but Waverley, hitherto
occupied by the amusements which he had found at Tully-Veolan and
Glennaquoich, dispensed with paying any attention to hints so
coldly thrown out, especially as distance, shortness of leave of
absence, and so forth furnished a ready apology. But latterly the
burden of Mr. Richard Waverley's paternal epistles consisted in
certain mysterious hints of greatness and influence which he was
speedily to attain, and which would ensure his son's obtaining the
most rapid promotion, should he remain in the military service.
Sir Everard's letters were of a different tenor. They were short;
for the good Baronet was none of your illimitable correspondents,
whose manuscript overflows the folds of their large post paper,
and leaves no room for the seal; but they were kind and
affectionate, and seldom concluded without some allusion to our
hero's stud, some question about the state of his purse, and a
special inquiry after such of his recruits as had preceded him
from Waverley-Honour. Aunt Rachel charged him to remember his
principles of religion, to take care of his health, to beware of
Scotch mists, which, she had heard, would wet an Englishman
through and through, never to go out at night without his great-
coat, and, above all, to wear flannel next to his skin.
Mr. Pembroke only wrote to our hero one letter, but it was of the
bulk of six epistles of these degenerate days, containing, in the
moderate compass of ten folio pages, closely written, a precis of
a supplementary quarto manuscript of addenda, delenda, et
corrigenda in reference to the two tracts with which he had
presented Waverley. This he considered as a mere sop in the pan to
stay the appetite of Edward's curiosity until he should find an
opportunity of sending down the volume itself, which was much too
heavy for the post, and which he proposed to accompany with
certain interesting pamphlets, lately published by his friend in
Little Britain, with whom he had kept up a sort of literary
correspondence, in virtue of which the library shelves of
Waverley-Honour were loaded with much trash, and a good round
bill, seldom summed in fewer than three figures, was yearly
transmitted, in which Sir Everard Waverley of Waverley-Honour,
Bart., was marked Dr. to Jonathan Grubbet, bookseller and
stationer, Little Britain. Such had hitherto been the style of the
letters which Edward had received from England; but the packet
delivered to him at Glennaquoich was of a different and more
interesting complexion. It would be impossible for the reader,
even were I to insert the letters at full length, to comprehend
the real cause of their being written, without a glance into the
interior of the British cabinet at the period in question.
The ministers of the day happened (no very singular event) to be
divided into two parties; the weakest of which, making up by
assiduity of intrigue their inferiority in real consequence, had
of late acquired some new proselytes, and with them the hope of
superseding their rivals in the favour of their sovereign, and
overpowering them in the House of Commons. Amongst others, they
had thought it worth while to practise upon Richard Waverley. This
honest gentleman, by a grave mysterious demeanour, an attention to
the etiquette of business rather more than to its essence, a
facility in making long dull speeches, consisting of truisms and
commonplaces, hashed up with a technical jargon of office, which
prevented the inanity of his orations from being discovered, had
acquired a certain name and credit in public life, and even
established, with many, the character of a profound politician;
none of your shining orators, indeed, whose talents evaporate in
tropes of rhetoric and flashes of wit, but one possessed of steady
parts for business, which would wear well, as the ladies say in
choosing their silks, and ought in all reason to be good for
common and every-day use, since they were confessedly formed of no
holiday texture.
This faith had become so general that the insurgent party in the
cabinet, of which we have made mention, after sounding Mr. Richard
Waverley, were so satisfied with his sentiments and abilities as
to propose that, in case of a certain revolution in the ministry,
he should take an ostensible place in the new order of things, not
indeed of the very first rank, but greatly higher, in point both
of emolument and influence, than that which he now enjoyed. There
was no resisting so tempting a proposal, notwithstanding that the
Great Man under whose patronage he had enlisted, and by whose
banner he had hitherto stood firm, was the principal object of the
proposed attack by the new allies. Unfortunately this fair scheme
of ambition was blighted in the very bud by a premature movement.
All the official gentlemen concerned in it who hesitated to take
the part of a voluntary resignation were informed that the king
had no further occasion for their services; and in Richard
Waverley's case, which the minister considered as aggravated by
ingratitude, dismissal was accompanied by something like personal
contempt and contumely. The public, and even the party of whom he
shared the fall, sympathised little in the disappointment of this
selfish and interested statesman; and he retired to the country
under the comfortable reflection that he had lost, at the same
time, character, credit, and,--what he at least equally deplored,
--emolument.
Richard Waverley's letter to his son upon this occasion was a
masterpiece of its kind. Aristides himself could not have made out
a harder case. An unjust monarch and an ungrateful country were
the burden of each rounded paragraph. He spoke of long services
and unrequited sacrifices; though the former had been overpaid by
his salary, and nobody could guess in what the latter consisted,
unless it were in his deserting, not from conviction, but for the
lucre of gain, the Tory principles of his family. In the
conclusion, his resentment was wrought to such an excess by the
force of his own oratory, that he could not repress some threats
of vengeance, however vague and impotent, and finally acquainted
his son with his pleasure that he should testify his sense of the
ill-treatment he had sustained by throwing up his commission as
soon as the letter reached him. This, he said, was also his
uncle's desire, as he would himself intimate in due course.
Accordingly, the next letter which Edward opened was from Sir
Everard. His brother's disgrace seemed to have removed from his
well-natured bosom all recollection of their differences, and,
remote as he was from every means of learning that Richard's
disgrace was in reality only the just as well as natural
consequence of his own unsuccessful intrigues, the good but
credulous Baronet at once set it down as a new and enormous
instance of the injustice of the existing government. It was true,
he said, and he must not disguise it even from Edward, that his
father could not have sustained such an insult as was now, for the
first time, offered to one of his house, unless he had subjected
himself to it by accepting of an employment under the present
system. Sir Everard had no doubt that he now both saw and felt the
magnitude of this error, and it should be his (Sir Everard's)
business to take care that the cause of his regret should not
extend itself to pecuniary consequences. It was enough for a
Waverley to have sustained the public disgrace; the patrimonial
injury could easily be obviated by the head of their family. But
it was both the opinion of Mr. Richard Waverley and his own that
Edward, the representative of the family of Waverley-Honour,
should not remain in a situation which subjected him also to such
treatment as that with which his father had been stigmatised. He
requested his nephew therefore to take the fittest, and at the
same time the most speedy, opportunity of transmitting his
resignation to the War Office, and hinted, moreover, that little
ceremony was necessary where so little had been used to his
father. He sent multitudinous greetings to the Baron of
Bradwardine.
A letter from Aunt Rachel spoke out even more plainly. She
considered the disgrace of brother Richard as the just reward of
his forfeiting his allegiance to a lawful though exiled sovereign,
and taking the oaths to an alien; a concession which her
grandfather, Sir Nigel Waverley, refused to make, either to the
Roundhead Parliament or to Cromwell, when his life and fortune
stood in the utmost extremity. She hoped her dear Edward would
follow the footsteps of his ancestors, and as speedily as possible
get rid of the badge of servitude to the usurping family, and
regard the wrongs sustained by his father as an admonition from
Heaven that every desertion of the line of loyalty becomes its own
punishment. She also concluded with her respects to Mr.
Bradwardine, and begged Waverley would inform her whether his
daughter, Miss Rose, was old enough to wear a pair of very
handsome ear-rings, which she proposed to send as a token of her
affection. The good lady also desired to be informed whether Mr.
Bradwardine took as much Scotch snuff and danced as unweariedly as
he did when he was at Waverley-Honour about thirty years ago.
These letters, as might have been expected, highly excited
Waverley's indignation. From the desultory style of his studies,
he had not any fixed political opinion to place in opposition to
the movements of indignation which he felt at his father's
supposed wrongs. Of the real cause of his disgrace Edward was
totally ignorant; nor had his habits at all led him to investigate
the politics of the period in which he lived, or remark the
intrigues in which his father had been so actively engaged.
Indeed, any impressions which he had accidentally adopted
concerning the parties of the times were (owing to the society in
which he had lived at Waverley-Honour) of a nature rather
unfavourable to the existing government and dynasty. He entered,
therefore, without hesitation into the resentful feeling of the
relations who had the best title to dictate his conduct, and not
perhaps the less willingly when he remembered the tedium of his
quarters, and the inferior figure which he had made among the
officers of his regiment. If he could have had any doubt upon the
subject it would have been decided by the following letter from
his commanding officer, which, as it is very short, shall be
inserted verbatim:--
SIR,--
Having carried somewhat beyond the line of my duty an indulgence
which even the lights of nature, and much more those of
Christianity, direct towards errors which may arise from youth and
inexperience, and that altogether without effect, I am reluctantly
compelled, at the present crisis, to use the only remaining remedy
which is in my power. You are, therefore, hereby commanded to
repair to--, the headquarters of the regiment, within three days
after the date of this letter. If you shall fail to do so, I must
report you to the War Office as absent without leave, and also
take other steps, which will be disagreeable to you as well as to,
Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
J. GARDINER, Lieut.-Col.
Commanding the----Regt. Dragoons.
Edward's blood boiled within him as he read this letter. He had
been accustomed from his very infancy to possess in a great
measure the disposal of his own time, and thus acquired habits
which rendered the rules of military discipline as unpleasing to
him in this as they were in some other respects. An idea that in
his own case they would not be enforced in a very rigid manner had
also obtained full possession of his mind, and had hitherto been
sanctioned by the indulgent conduct of his lieutenant-colonel.
Neither had anything occurred, to his knowledge, that should have
induced his commanding officer, without any other warning than the
hints we noticed at the end of the fourteenth chapter, so suddenly
to assume a harsh and, as Edward deemed it, so insolent a tone of
dictatorial authority. Connecting it with the letters he had just
received from his family, he could not but suppose that it was
designed to make him feel, in his present situation, the same
pressure of authority which had been exercised in his father's
case, and that the whole was a concerted scheme to depress and
degrade every member of the Waverley family.
Without a pause, therefore, Edward wrote a few cold lines,
thanking his lieutenant-colonel for past civilities, and
expressing regret that he should have chosen to efface the
remembrance of them by assuming a different tone towards him. The
strain of his letter, as well as what he (Edward) conceived to be
his duty in the present crisis, called upon him to lay down his
commission; and he therefore inclosed the formal resignation of a
situation which subjected him to so unpleasant a correspondence,
and requested Colonel Gardiner would have the goodness to forward
it to the proper authorities.
Having finished this magnanimous epistle, he felt somewhat
uncertain concerning the terms in which his resignation ought to
be expressed, upon which subject he resolved to consult Fergus
Mac-Ivor. It may be observed in passing that the bold and prompt
habits of thinking, acting, and speaking which distinguished this
young Chieftain had given him a considerable ascendency over the
mind of Waverley. Endowed with at least equal powers of
understanding, and with much finer genius, Edward yet stooped to
the bold and decisive activity of an intellect which was sharpened
by the habit of acting on a preconceived and regular system, as
well as by extensive knowledge of the world.
When Edward found his friend, the latter had still in his hand the
newspaper which he had perused, and advanced to meet him with the
embarrassment of one who has unpleasing news to communicate. 'Do
your letters, Captain Waverley, confirm the unpleasing information
which I find in this paper?'
He put the paper into his hand, where his father's disgrace was
registered in the most bitter terms, transferred probably from
some London journal. At the end of the paragraph was this
remarkable innuendo:--
'We understand that "this same RICHARD who hath done all this" is
not the only example of the WAVERING HONOUR of W-v-r-ly H-n-r. See
the Gazette of this day.'
With hurried and feverish apprehension our hero turned to the
place referred to, and found therein recorded, 'Edward Waverley,
captain in----regiment dragoons, superseded for absence without
leave'; and in the list of military promotions, referring to the
same regiment, he discovered this farther article, 'Lieut. Julius
Butler, to be captain, VICE Edward Waverley, superseded.'
Our hero's bosom glowed with the resentment which undeserved and
apparently premeditated insult was calculated to excite in the
bosom of one who had aspired after honour, and was thus wantonly
held up to public scorn and disgrace. Upon comparing the date of
his colonel's letter with that of the article in the Gazette, he
perceived that his threat of making a report upon his absence had
been literally fulfilled, and without inquiry, as it seemed,
whether Edward had either received his summons or was disposed to
comply with it. The whole, therefore, appeared a formed plan to
degrade him in the eyes of the public; and the idea of its having
succeeded filled him with such bitter emotions that, after various
attempts to conceal them, he at length threw himself into Mac-
Ivor's arms, and gave vent to tears of shame and indignation.
It was none of this Chieftain's faults to be indifferent to the
wrongs of his friends; and for Edward, independent of certain
plans with which he was connected, he felt a deep and sincere
interest. The proceeding appeared as extraordinary to him as it
had done to Edward. He indeed knew of more motives than Waverley
was privy to for the peremptory order that he should join his
regiment. But that, without further inquiry into the circumstances
of a necessary delay, the commanding officer, in contradiction to
his known and established character, should have proceeded in so
harsh and unusual a manner was a mystery which he could not
penetrate. He soothed our hero, however, to the best of his power,
and began to turn his thoughts on revenge for his insulted honour.
Edward eagerly grasped at the idea. 'Will you carry a message for
me to Colonel Gardiner, my dear Fergus, and oblige me for ever?'
Fergus paused. 'It is an act of friendship which you should
command, could it be useful, or lead to the righting your honour;
but in the present case I doubt if your commanding officer would
give you the meeting on account of his having taken measures
which, however harsh and exasperating, were still within the
strict bounds of his duty. Besides, Gardiner is a precise
Huguenot, and has adopted certain ideas about the sinfulness of
such rencontres, from which it would be impossible to make him
depart, especially as his courage is beyond all suspicion. And
besides, I--I, to say the truth--I dare not at this moment, for
some very weighty reasons, go near any of the military quarters or
garrisons belonging to this government.'
'And am I,' said Waverley, 'to sit down quiet and contented under
the injury I have received?'
'That will I never advise my friend,' replied Mac-Ivor. 'But I
would have vengeance to fall on the head, not on the hand, on the
tyrannical and oppressive government which designed and directed
these premeditated and reiterated insults, not on the tools of
office which they employed in the execution of the injuries they
aimed at you.'
'On the government!' said Waverley.
'Yes,' replied the impetuous Highlander, 'on the usurping House of
Hanover, whom your grandfather would no more have served than he
would have taken wages of red-hot gold from the great fiend of
hell!'
'But since the time of my grandfather two generations of this
dynasty have possessed the throne,' said Edward coolly.
'True,' replied the Chieftain; 'and because we have passively
given them so long the means of showing their native character,--
because both you and I myself have lived in quiet submission, have
even truckled to the times so far as to accept commissions under
them, and thus have given them an opportunity of disgracing us
publicly by resuming them, are we not on that account to resent
injuries which our fathers only apprehended, but which we have
actually sustained? Or is the cause of the unfortunate Stuart
family become less just, because their title has devolved upon an
heir who is innocent of the charges of misgovernment brought
against his father? Do you remember the lines of your favourite
poet?
Had Richard unconstrain'd resign'd the throne,
A king can give no more than is his own;
The title stood entail'd had Richard had a son.
You see, my dear Waverley, I can quote poetry as well as Flora and
you. But come, clear your moody brow, and trust to me to show you
an honourable road to a speedy and glorious revenge. Let us seek
Flora, who perhaps has more news to tell us of what has occurred
during our absence. She will rejoice to hear that you are relieved
of your servitude. But first add a postscript to your letter,
marking the time when you received this calvinistical colonel's
first summons, and express your regret that the hastiness of his
proceedings prevented your anticipating them by sending your
resignation. Then let him blush for his injustice.'
The letter was sealed accordingly, covering a formal resignation
of the commission, and Mac-Ivor despatched it with some letters of
his own by a special messenger, with charge to put them into the
nearest post-office in the Lowlands.