DULCE DOMUM
The impression of horror with which Waverley left Carlisle softened by
degrees into melancholy, a gradation which was accelerated by the
painful yet soothing task of writing to Rose; and, while he could not
suppress his own feelings of the calamity, he endeavoured to place it
in a light which might grieve her without shocking her imagination. The
picture which he drew for her benefit he gradually familiarised to his
own mind, and his next letters were more cheerful, and referred to the
prospects of peace and happiness which lay before them. Yet, though his
first horrible sensations had sunk into melancholy, Edward had reached
his native country before he could, as usual on former occasions, look
round for enjoyment upon the face of nature.
He then, for the first time since leaving Edinburgh, began to
experience that pleasure which almost all feel who return to a verdant,
populous, and highly cultivated country from scenes of waste desolation
or of solitary and melancholy grandeur. But how were those feelings
enhanced when he entered on the domain so long possessed by his
forefathers; recognised the old oaks of Waverley-Chace; thought with
what delight he should introduce Rose to all his favourite haunts;
beheld at length the towers of the venerable hall arise above the woods
which embowered it, and finally threw himself into the arms of the
venerable relations to whom he owed so much duty and affection!
The happiness of their meeting was not tarnished by a single word of
reproach. On the contrary, whatever pain Sir Everard and Mrs. Rachel
had felt during Waverley’s perilous engagement with the young
Chevalier, it assorted too well with the principles in which they had
been brought up to incur reprobation, or even censure. Colonel Talbot
also had smoothed the way with great address for Edward’s favourable
reception by dwelling upon his gallant behaviour in the military
character, particularly his bravery and generosity at Preston; until,
warmed at the idea of their nephew’s engaging in single combat, making
prisoner, and saving from slaughter so distinguished an officer as the
Colonel himself, the imagination of the Baronet and his sister ranked
the exploits of Edward with those of Wilibert, Hildebrand, and Nigel,
the vaunted heroes of their line.
The appearance of Waverley, embrowned by exercise and dignified by the
habits of military discipline, had acquired an athletic and hardy
character, which not only verified the Colonel’s narration, but
surprised and delighted all the inhabitants of Waverley-Honour. They
crowded to see, to hear him, and to sing his praises. Mr. Pembroke, who
secretly extolled his spirit and courage in embracing the genuine cause
of the Church of England, censured his pupil gently, nevertheless, for
being so careless of his manuscripts, which indeed, he said, had
occasioned him some personal inconvenience, as, upon the Baronet’s
being arrested by a king’s messenger, he had deemed it prudent to
retire to a concealment called “The Priest’s Hole,” from the use it had
been put to in former days; where, he assured our hero, the butler had
thought it safe to venture with food only once in the day, so that he
had been repeatedly compelled to dine upon victuals either absolutely
cold or, what was worse, only half warm, not to mention that sometimes
his bed had not been arranged for two days together. Waverley’s mind
involuntarily turned to the Patmos of the Baron of Bradwardine, who was
well pleased with Janet’s fare and a few bunches of straw stowed in a
cleft in the front of a sand-cliff; but he made no remarks upon a
contrast which could only mortify his worthy tutor.
All was now in a bustle to prepare for the nuptials of Edward, an event
to which the good old Baronet and Mrs. Rachel looked forward as if to
the renewal of their own youth. The match, as Colonel Talbot had
intimated, had seemed to them in the highest degree eligible, having
every recommendation but wealth, of which they themselves had more than
enough. Mr. Clippurse was therefore summoned to Waverley-Honour, under
better auspices than at the commencement of our story. But Mr.
Clippurse came not alone; for, being now stricken in years, he had
associated with him a nephew, a younger vulture (as our English
Juvenal, who tells the tale of Swallow the attorney, might have called
him), and they now carried on business as Messrs. Clippurse and Hookem.
These worthy gentlemen had directions to make the necessary settlements
on the most splendid scale of liberality, as if Edward were to wed a
peeress in her own right, with her paternal estate tacked to the fringe
of her ermine.
But before entering upon a subject of proverbial delay, I must remind
my reader of the progress of a stone rolled downhill by an idle truant
boy (a pastime at which I was myself expert in my more juvenile years),
it moves at first slowly, avoiding by inflection every obstacle of the
least importance; but when it has attained its full impulse, and draws
near the conclusion of its career, it smokes and thunders down, taking
a rood at every spring, clearing hedge and ditch like a Yorkshire
huntsman, and becoming most furiously rapid in its course when it is
nearest to being consigned to rest for ever. Even such is the course of
a narrative like that which you are perusing. The earlier events are
studiously dwelt upon, that you, kind reader, may be introduced to the
character rather by narrative than by the duller medium of direct
description; but when the story draws near its close, we hurry over the
circumstances, however important, which your imagination must have
forestalled, and leave you to suppose those things which it would be
abusing your patience to relate at length.
We are, therefore, so far from attempting to trace the dull progress of
Messrs. Clippurse and Hookem, or that of their worthy official brethren
who had the charge of suing out the pardons of Edward Waverley and his
intended father-in-law, that we can but touch upon matters more
attractive. The mutual epistles, for example, which were exchanged
between Sir Everard and the Baron upon this occasion, though matchless
specimens of eloquence in their way, must be consigned to merciless
oblivion. Nor can I tell you at length how worthy Aunt Rachel, not
without a delicate and affectionate allusion to the circumstances which
had transferred Rose’s maternal diamonds to the hands of Donald Bean
Lean, stocked her casket with a set of jewels that a duchess might have
envied. Moreover, the reader will have the goodness to imagine that Job
Houghton and his dame were suitably provided for, although they could
never be persuaded that their son fell otherwise than fighting by the
young squire’s side; so that Alick, who, as a lover of truth, had made
many needless attempts to expound the real circumstances to them, was
finally ordered to say not a word more upon the subject. He indemnified
himself, however, by the liberal allowance of desperate battles, grisly
executions, and raw-head and bloody-bone stories with which he
astonished the servants’ hall.
But although these important matters may be briefly told in narrative,
like a newspaper report of a Chancery suit, yet, with all the urgency
which Waverley could use, the real time which the law proceedings
occupied, joined to the delay occasioned by the mode of travelling at
that period, rendered it considerably more than two months ere
Waverley, having left England, alighted once more at the mansion of the
Laird of Duchran to claim the hand of his plighted bride.
The day of his marriage was fixed for the sixth after his arrival. The
Baron of Bradwardine, with whom bridals, christenings, and funerals
were festivals of high and solemn import, felt a little hurt that,
including the family of the Duchran and all the immediate vicinity who
had title to be present on such an occasion, there could not be above
thirty persons collected. “When he was married,” he observed, “three
hundred horse of gentlemen born, besides servants, and some score or
two of Highland lairds, who never got on horseback, were present on the
occasion.”
But his pride found some consolation in reflecting that, he and his
son-in-law having been so lately in arms against government, it might
give matter of reasonable fear and offence to the ruling powers if they
were to collect together the kith, kin, and allies of their houses,
arrayed in effeir of war, as was the ancient custom of Scotland on
these occasions—“And, without dubitation,” he concluded with a sigh,
“many of those who would have rejoiced most freely upon these joyful
espousals are either gone to a better place or are now exiles from
their native land.”
The marriage took place on the appointed day. The Reverend Mr. Rubrick,
kinsman to the proprietor of the hospitable mansion where it was
solemnised, and chaplain to the Baron of Bradwardine, had the
satisfaction to unite their hands; and Frank Stanley acted as
bridesman, having joined Edward with that view soon after his arrival.
Lady Emily and Colonel Talbot had proposed being present; but Lady
Emily’s health, when the day approached, was found inadequate to the
journey. In amends it was arranged that Edward Waverley and his lady,
who, with the Baron, proposed an immediate journey to Waverley-Honour,
should in their way spend a few days at an estate which Colonel Talbot
had been tempted to purchase in Scotland as a very great bargain, and
at which he proposed to reside for some time.