Both parties returned to Tully-Veolan in great good humour with each other; Waverley desirous of studying more attentively what he considered as a singular and interesting character, gifted with a memory containing a curious register of ancient and modem anecdotes; and Bradwardine disposed to regard Edward as _puer_ (or rather _juvenis_) _bones spei et magn<ae> indolis,_a youth devoid of that petulant volatility which is impatient of, or vili ends, the conversation and advice of his seniors, from which he predicted great things of his future success and deportment in life.There was no other guest except Mr.
Rubrick, whose information and discourse, as a clergyman and a scholar, harmonized very well with that of the Baron and his guest.
Shortly after dinner, the Baron, as if to show that his temperance was not entirely theoretical, proposed a visit to Rose's apartment, or, as he termed it, her _Troisi<e`>me Etage._Waverley was accordingly conducted through one or two of those long awkward passages with which ancient architects studied to puzzle the inhabitants of the houses which they planned, at the end of which Mr.Bradwardine began to ascend, by two steps at once, a very steep, narrow, and winding stair, leaving Mr.Rubrick and Waverley to follow at more leisure, while he should announce their approach to his daughter.
After having climbed this perpendicular corkscrew until their brains were almost giddy, they arrived in a little matted lobby, which served m an ante-room to Rose's _sanctum sanctorum,_ and through which they entered her parlour.It was a small but pleasant apartment, opening to the south, and hung with tapestry;adorned besides with two pictures, one of her mother, in the dress of a shepherdess, with a bell-hoop; the other of the Baron, in his tenth year, in a blue coat, embroidered waistcoat, laced hat, and bag-wig, with a bow in his hand.Edward could not help smiling at the costume, and at the odd resemblance between the round, smooth, red-checked, staring visage in the portrait, and the gaunt, bearded, hollow-eyed, swarthy features, which travelling, fatigues of war, and advanced age, had bestowed on the original.The Baron joined in the laugh.
``Truly,'' he said, ``that picture was a woman's fantasy of my good mother's (a daughter of the Laird of Tulliellum, Captain Waverley; I indicated the house to you when we were on the top of the Shinnyheuch; it was burnt by the Dutch auxiliaries brought in by the Government in 1715); I never sate for my pourtraicture but once since that was painted, and it was at the special and reiterated request of the Marechal Duke of Berwick.''
The good old gentleman did not mention what Mr.Rubrick afterwards told Edward, that the Duke had done him this honour on account of his being the first to mount the breach of a fort in Savoy during the memorable campaign of 1709, and his having there defended himself with his half-pike for nearly ten minutes before any support reached him.To do the Baron justice, although sufficiently prone to dwell upon, and even to exaggerate, his family dignity and consequence, he was too much a man of real courage ever to allude to such personal acts of merit as he had himself manifested.
Miss Rose now appeared from the interior room of her apartment, to welcome her father and his friends.The little labours in which she had been employed obviously showed a natural taste, which required only cultivation.Her father had taught her French and Italian, and a few of the ordinary authors in those languages ornamented her shelves.He had endeavoured also to be her preceptor in music; but as he began with the more abstruse doctrines of the science, and was not perhaps master of them himself, she had made no proficiency farther than to be able to accompany her voice with the harpsichord;but even this was not very common in Scotland at that period.
To make amends, she sung with great taste and feeling, and with a respect to the sense of what she uttered that might be proposed in example to ladies of much superior musical talent.
Her natural good sense taught her, that if, as we are assured by high authority, music be ``married to immortal verse,'' they are very often divorced by the performer in a most shameful manner.It was perhaps owing to this sensibility to poetry, and power of combining its expression with those of the musical notes, that her singing gave more pleasure to all the unlearned in music, and even to many of the learned, than could have been communicated by a much finer voice and more brilliant execution, unguided by the same delicacy of feeling.
A bartizan, or projecting gallery, before the windows of her parlour, served to illustrate another of Rose's pursuits; for it was crowded with flowers of different kinds, which she had taken under her special protection.A projecting turret gave access to this Gothic balcony, which commanded a most beautiful prospect.The formal garden, with its high bounding walls, lay below, contracted, as it seemed, to a mere parterre;while the view extended beyond them down a wooded glen, where the small river was sometimes visible, sometimes hidden in copse.The eye might be delayed by a desire to rest on the rocks, which here and there rose from the dell with massive or spiry fronts, or it might dwell on the noble, though ruined tower, which was here beheld in all its dignity, frowning from a promontory over the river.To the left were seen two or three cottages, a part of the village; the brow of the hill concealed the others.The glen, or dell, was terminated by a sheet of water, called Loch-Veolan, into which the brook discharged itself, and which now glistened in the western sun.The distant country seemed open and varied in surface, though not wooded;and there was nothing to interrupt the view until the scene was bounded by a ridge of distant and blue hills, which formed the southern boundary of the strath or valley.To this pleasant station Miss Bradwardine had ordered coffee.
