ROSE BRADWARDINE AND HER FATHER.
Miss Bradwardine was but seventeen; yet, at the last races of the county town of ------, upon her health being proposed among a round of beauties, the Laird of Bumperquaigh, permanent toastmaster and croupier of the Bautherwhillery Club, not only said _More_ to the pledge in a pint bumper of Bourdeaux, but, ere pouring forth the libation, denominated the divinity to whom it was dedicated, ``the Rose of Tully-Veolan;'' upon which festive occasion, three cheers were given by all the sitting members of that respectable society, whose throats the wine had left capable of such exertion.Nay, I am well assured, that the sleeping partners of the company snorted applause, and that although strong bumpers and weak brains had consigned two or three to the floor, yet even these, fallen as they were from their high estate, and weltering---I will carry the parody no farther---uttered divers inarticulate sounds, intimating their assent to the motion.
Such unanimous applause could not be extorted but by acknowledged merit; and Rose Bradwardine not only deserved it, but also the approbation of much more rational persons than the Bautherwhillery Club could have mustered, even before discussion of the first _magnum._ She was indeed a very pretty girl of the Scotch cast of beauty, that is, with a profusion of hair of paley gold, and a skin like the snow of her own mountains in whiteness.Yet she had not a pallid or pensive cast of countenance; her features, as well as her temper, had a lively expression; her complexion, though not florid, was so pure as to seem transparent, and the slightest emotion sent her whole blood at once to her face and neck.Her form, though under the common size, was remarkably elegant, and her motions light, easy, and unembarrassed.She came from another part of the garden to receive Captain Waverley, with a manner that hovered between bashfulness and courtesy.
The first greetings past, Edward learned from her that the _dark hag,_ which had somewhat puzzled him in the butler's account of his master's avocations, had nothing to do either with a black cat or a broomstick, but was simply a portion of oak copse which was to be felled that day.She offered, with diffident civility, to show the stranger the way to the spot, which, it seems, was not far distant; but they were prevented by the appearance of the Baron of Bradwardine in person, who, summoned by David Gellatley, now appeared, ``on hospitable thoughts intent,'' clearing the ground at a prodigious rate with swift and long strides, which reminded Waverley of the seven-league boots of the nursery fable.He was a tall, thin, athletic figure; old indeed, and grey-haired, but with every muscle rendered as tough as whip-cord by constant exercise.He was dressed carelessly, and more like a Frenchman than an Englishman of the period, while, from his hard features and perpendicular rigidity of stature, he bore some resemblance to a Swiss officer of the guards, who had resided some time at Paris, and caught the _costume,_ but not the ease or manner of its inhabitants.
The truth was, that his language and habits were as heterogeneous as his external appearance.
Owing to his natural disposition to study, or perhaps to a very general Scottish fashion of giving young men of rank a legal education, he had been bred with a view to the bar.But the politics of his family precluding the hope of his rising in that profession, Mr.Bradwardine travelled with high reputation for several years, and made some campaigns in foreign service.
After his _d<e'>m<e^>l<e'>_ with the law of high treason in 1715, he had lived in retirement, conversing almost entirely with those of his own principles in the vicinage.The pedantry of the lawyer, superinduced upon the military pride of the soldier, might remind a modern of the days of the zealous volunteer service, when the bar-gown of our pleaders was often flung over a blazing uniform.To this must be added the prejudices of ancient birth and Jacobite politics, greatly strengthened by habits of solitary and secluded authority, which, though exercised only within the bounds of his half-cultivated estate, was there indisputable and undisputed.For, as he used to observe, ``the lands of Bradwardine, Tully-Veolan, and others, had been erected into a free barony by a charter from David the First, _cum liberali potest.habendi curias et justicias, cum fossa et furca_(=lie= pit and gallows) _et saka et soka, et thol et theam, et infang-thief et outfang-thief, sive hand-habend.sive bak-barand._'' The peculiar meaning of all these cabalistical words few or none could explain; but they implied, upon the whole, that the Baron of Bradwardine might, in case of delinquency, imprison, try, and execute his vassals at his pleasure.Like James the first, however, the present possessor of this authority was more pleased in talking about prerogative than in exercising it; and, excepting that he imprisoned two poachers in the dungeon of the old tower of Tully-Veolan, where they were sorely frightened by ghosts, and almost eaten by rats, and that he set an old woman in the _jougs_ (or Scottish pillory) for saying ``there were mair fules in the laird's ha' house than Davie Gellatley,''
I do not learn that he was accused of abusing his high powers.
Still, however, the conscious pride of possessing them gave additional importance to his language and deportment.
