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 _Cæsar_, 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 the tale was resumed. A flat "throuch"
stone sustained the narrator, while the four
disposed themselves on the sunny grass, in the
various attitudes of severe inattention which youth
assumes when listening to a story. Sweetheart pored
into the depths of a buttercup. Hugh John scratched
the freestone of a half-buried tomb with a nail
till told to stop. Sir Toady Lion, having a
"pinch-bug" coralled in his palms, sat regarding it
cautiously between his thumbs. Only Maid Margaret,
her dimpled chin on her knuckles, sat looking
upward in rapt attention. For her there was no joy
like that of a story. Only, she was too young to
mind letting the tale-teller know it. That made the
difference.
Above our heads the beautiful ruin mounted, now all
red gold in the lights, and purple in the shadows,
while round and round, and through and through,
from highest tower to lowest arch, the swifts
shrieked and swooped.