A hint thus conveyed and enforced was not to be neglected with impunity; and Richard Waverley, though with great dread of shocking his brother's prejudices, deemed he could not avoid accepting the commission, thus offered him for his son.
The truth is, he calculated much, and justly, upon Sir Everard's fondness for Edward, which made him unlikely to resent any step that he might take in due submission to parental authority.
Two letters announced this determination to the Baronet and his nephew.The latter barely communicated the fact, and pointed out the necessary preparation for joining his regiment.
To his brother, Richard was more diffuse and circuitous.He coincided with him in the most flattering manner, in the propriety of his son's seeing a little more of the world, and was even humble in expressions of gratitude for his proposed assistance;was, however deeply concerned that it was now, unfortunately, not in Edward's power exactly to comply with the plan which had been chalked out by his best friend and benefactor.
He himself had thought with pain on the boy's inactivity, at an age when all his ancestors had borne arms; even Royalty itself had deigned to inquire whether young Waverley was not now in Flanders, at an age when his grandfather was already bleeding for his king in the Great Civil War.This was accompanied by an offer of a troop of horse.What could he do? There was no time to consult his brother's inclinations, even if he could have conceived there might be objections on his part to his nephew's following the glorious career of his predecessors.And, in short, that Edward was now (the intermediate steps of cornet and lieutenant being overleapt with great agility) Captain Waverley of Gardiner's regiment of dragoons, which he must join in their quarters at Dundee in Scotland, in the course of a month.
Sir Everard Waverley received this intimation with a mixture of feelings.At the period of the Hanoverian succession he had withdrawn from parliament, and his conduct in the memorable year 1715 had not been altogether unsuspected.There were reports of private musters of tenants and horses in Waverley-Chase by moonlight, and of cases of carbines and pistols purchased in Holland, and addressed to the Baronet, but intercepted by the vigilance of a riding officer of the excise, who was afterwards tossed in a blanket on a moonless night by an association of stout yeomen for his officiousness.Nay, it was even said, that at the arrest of Sir William Wyndham, the leader of the Tory party, a letter from Sir Everard was found in the pocket of his night-gown.But there was no overt act which an attainder could be founded on; and government, contented with suppressing the insurrection of 1715, felt it neither prudent nor safe to push their vengeance farther than against those unfortunate gentlemen who actually took up arms.
Nor did Sir Everard's apprehensions of personal consequences seem to correspond with the reports spread among his Whig neighbours.It was well known that he had supplied with money several of the distressed Northumbrians and Scotchmen, who, after being made prisoners at Preston in Lancashire, were imprisoned in Newgate and the Marshalsea; and it was his solicitor and ordinary counsel who conducted the defence of some of these unfortunate gentlemen at their trial.It was generally supposed, however, that had ministers possessed any real proof of Sir Everard's accession to the rebellion, he either would not have ventured thus to brave the existing government, or at least would not have done so with impunity.The feelings which then dictated his proceedings were those of a young man, and at an agitating period.Since that time Sir Everard's jacobitism had been gradually decaying, like a fire which burns out for want of fuel.His Tory and High-church principles were kept up by some occasional exercise at elections and quarter-sessions;but those respecting hereditary right were fallen into a sort of abeyance.Yet it jarred severely upon his feelings, that his nephew should go into the army under the Brunswick dynasty; and the more so, as, independent of his high and conscientious ideas of paternal authority, it was impossible, or at least highly imprudent, to interfere authoritatively to prevent it.This suppressed vexation gave rise to many poohs and pshaws, which were placed to the account of an incipient fit of gout, until, having sent for the Army List, the worthy Baronet consoled himself with reckoning the descendants of the houses of genuine loyalty---Mordaunts, Granvilles, and Stanleys, whose names were to be found in that military record; and calling up all his feelings of family grandeur and warlike glory, he concluded, with logic something like Falstaff's, that when war was at hand, although it were shame to be on any side but one, it were worse shame to be idle than to be on the worst side, though blacker than usurpation could make it.As for Aunt Rachel, her scheme had not exactly terminated according to her wishes but she was under the necessity of submitting to circumstances;and her mortification was diverted by the employment she found in fitting out her nephew for the campaign, and greatly consoled by the prospect of beholding him blaze in complete uniform.