Abductions, Insurrection, and Destiny's scythed car

Walter Scott, The Black Dwarf: Reading Notes, Part II

Elshie's misanthropy challenged when a brigand informs him that he intends to raid Hobbie Eliot's homestead. Elshie considers whether to try to warn Hobbie but concludes that his war against humanity cannot allow such mercy: "I will not be the fool I have been, to swerve from my principles whenever there is an appeal, foresooth, to my feelings; as if I, toward whom none hold sympathy, ought to have sympathy with any one. Let Destiny drive forth her scythed car through the overwhelmed and trembling mass of humanity. Shall I be the idiot to throw this decrepit form, this mis-shapen lump of mortality, under her wheels?"

The brigand spurs his reluctant horse to the deed and Elshie reflects "that villain, that cool-blooded, hardened, unrelenting ruffian -- that wretch whose every thought is infected with crimes -- has thews and sinews, limbs, strength, and activity enough to compel a nobler animal than himself to carry him to the place where he is to perpetrate his wickedness."

Any chance that Elshie will intervene for Hobbie is dashed when the yeoman's hunting hound instinctively slaughters one of the gentle goats the hermit had been given by Earnscliff -- a beast whom the hunchback Elshie had noted treated him with a kindness and gratitude few humans had extended.

Hobbie defends his hound's act as part of his nature. Elshie too sees the attack as "natural": "yes! It is indeed in the usual beaten path of Nature. The strong gripe and throttle the weak; the rich depress and despoil the needy; the happy (those who are idiots enough to think themselves happy) insult the misery and diminish the consolation of the wretched."

Elshie curses Hobbie, which sends a bolt of fear through the superstitious yeoman.

When the brigand returns to Elshie's hut to report he and his gang have destroyed Hobbie's farmstead and kidnapped his fiance, the hermit intervenes with a bribe (one of several recent indications that he is of the gentry) to save the maiden from being sent in bondage to the colonies.

Hobbie's vengefulness somewhat held in check, first by his grandmother's insistence that he say the words "God's will be done" to indicate his acceptance of whatever ill-fate confronts him, then by the oath sworn by Earnscliff -- "Hand and faith! Troth and glove!" -- against attacking the brigand once he surrenders. Hobbie returns glowering from his martial adventures to find that his fiance has been returned through peaceful means -- his grandmother's prayers realized (but really Elshie's bribe of the brigand).

The expedition to free Hobbie's betrothed instead freed Isabella Vere, whose abduction had been planned by her calculating father Laird Ellieslaw, a reformed rake with animus against Earnscliff. Ellieslaw's intent to foment antagonism and thus inflame revolt along the Border in favor of the Catholic cause and the exiled Stewarts.

A more moderate Jacobite speaks of the reformed rake Ellieslaw's rashness: "I am not of so indifferent a mould as my cousin Ellieslaw, who speaks treason as if it were a child's nursery rhymes and loses and recovers that sweet girl, his daughter, with a good deal less emotion on both occasions, than would have effected me had I lost and recovered a greyhound puppy. My temper is not quite so inflexible, nor my hate against government so inveterate, as to blind me to the full danger of the attempt."

A gathering of Jacobites at Ellieslaw castle also includes "many subordinate malcontents, whom difficulty of circumstances, love of change, resentment against England, or any of the numerous causes which inflamed men's passions at the time, rendered apt to join in perilous enterprise."

The insurgent party is anxious rather than ardent, finding themselves in circumstances "where it is alike difficult to advance or recede. The precipice looked deeped and more dangerous as they approached the brink, and each waited with an inward emotion of awe, expecting which of his confederates would set the example by plunging himself down."

The bold Mareschal tries to raise the spirits of the insurgents: "If we have gone forward like fools, do not let us go back like cowards. We have done enough to draw upon us both the suspicion and vengeance of the government; do not let us give up before we have done something to deserve it."

Mareschal succeeds in emboldening the conspirtors, who Scott has respond with a hilarious series of self-interested toasts. Mareschal "seemed to take a mischievious delight in precipitating the movements of the enthusiasm which he had excited, like a rougish boy, who, having lifted the sliuce of the mill-dam, enjoys the clatter of the wheels which he has put into motion, without thinking of the mischief he may have occasioned."

Mareschal's rousing of the crowd revealed as all the more reckless when it is revealed that he had private knowledge that the revolt is already falling apart. He explains to his agast fellow conspirators: "I am tired of a party that does nothing but form bold resolutions over night, and sleep them away with their wine before morning."

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