CHAPTER XLVI
Say from whence
You owe this strange intelligence? or why
Upon this blasted heath you stop our way
With such prophetic greeting?
Speak, I charge you.
Macbeth.
Upon the evening of the day when Bertram's examination had taken place, Colonel Mannering arrived at Woodbourne from Edinburgh. He found his family in their usual state, which probably, so far as Julia was concerned, would not have been the case had she learned the news of Bertram's arrest. But as, during the Colonel's absence, the two young ladies lived much retired, this circumstance fortunately had not reached Woodbourne. A letter had already made Miss Bertram acquainted with the downfall of the expectations which had been formed upon the bequest of her kinswoman. Whatever hopes that news might have dispelled, the disappointment did not prevent her from joining her friend in affording a cheerful reception to the Colonel, to whom she thus endeavoured to express the deep sense she entertained of his paternal kindness. She touched on her regret that at such a season of the year he should have made, upon her account, a journey so fruitless.
'That it was fruitless to you, my dear,' said the Colonel, 'I do most deeply lament; but for my own share, I have made some valuable acquaintances, and have spent the time I have been absent in Edinburgh with peculiar satisfaction; so that on that score there is nothing to be regretted. Even our friend the Dominie is returned thrice the man he was, from having sharpened his wits in controversy with the geniuses of the northern metropolis.'
'Of a surety,' said the Dominie, with great complacency, 'I did wrestle, and was not overcome, though my adversary was cunning in his art.'
'I presume,' said Miss Mannering, 'the contest was somewhat fatiguing,
Mr. Sampson?'
'Very much, young lady; howbeit I girded up my loins and strove against him.'
'I can bear witness,' said the Colonel; 'I never saw an affair better contested. The enemy was like the Mahratta cavalry: he assailed on all sides, and presented no fair mark for artillery; but Mr. Sampson stood to his guns notwithstanding, and fired away, now upon the enemy and now upon the dust which he had raised. But we must not fight our battles over again to-night; to-morrow we shall have the whole at breakfast.'
The next morning at breakfast, however, the Dominie did not make his appearance. He had walked out, a servant said, early in the morning. It was so common for him to forget his meals that his absence never deranged the family. The housekeeper, a decent old-fashioned Presbyterian matron, having, as such, the highest respect for Sampson's theological acquisitions, had it in charge on these occasions to take care that he was no sufferer by his absence of mind, and therefore usually waylaid him on his return, to remind him of his sublunary wants, and to minister to their relief. It seldom, however, happened that he was absent from two meals together, as was the case in the present instance. We must explain the cause of this unusual occurrence.
The conversation which Mr. Pleydell had held with Mr. Mannering on the subject of the loss of Harry Bertram had awakened all the painful sensations which that event had inflicted upon Sampson. The affectionate heart of the poor Dominie had always reproached him that his negligence in leaving the child in the care of Frank Kennedy had been the proximate cause of the murder of the one, the loss of the other, the death of Mrs. Bertram, and the ruin of the family of his patron. It was a subject which he never conversed upon, if indeed his mode of speech could be called conversation at any time; but it was often present to his imagination. The sort of hope so strongly affirmed and asserted in Mrs. Bertram's last settlement had excited a corresponding feeling in the Dominie's bosom, which was exasperated into a sort of sickening anxiety by the discredit with which Pleydell had treated it. 'Assuredly,' thought Sampson to himself, 'he is a man of erudition, and well skilled in the weighty matters of the law; but he is also a man of humorous levity and inconsistency of speech, and wherefore should he pronounce ex cathedra, as it were, on the hope expressed by worthy Madam Margaret Bertram of Singleside?'
All this, I say, the Dominie THOUGHT to himself; for had he uttered half the sentence, his jaws would have ached for a month under the unusual fatigue of such a continued exertion. The result of these cogitations was a resolution to go and visit the scene of the tragedy at Warroch Point, where he had not been for many years; not, indeed, since the fatal accident had happened. The walk was a long one, for the Point of Warroch lay on the farther side of the Ellangowan property, which was interposed between it and Woodbourne. Besides, the Dominie went astray more than once, and met with brooks swoln into torrents by the melting of the snow, where he, honest man, had only the summer recollection of little trickling rills.
At length, however, he reached the woods which he had made the object of his excursion, and traversed them with care, muddling his disturbed brains with vague efforts to recall every circumstance of the catastrophe. It will readily be supposed that the influence of local situation and association was inadequate to produce conclusions different from those which he had formed under the immediate pressure of the occurrences themselves. 'With many a weary sigh, therefore, and many a groan,' the poor Dominie returned from his hopeless pilgrimage, and weariedly plodded his way towards Woodbourne, debating at times in his altered mind a question which was forced upon him by the cravings of an appetite rather of the keenest, namely, whether he had breakfasted that morning or no? It was in this twilight humour, now thinking of the loss of the child, then involuntarily compelled to meditate upon the somewhat incongruous subject of hung beef, rolls, and butter, that his route, which was different from that which he had taken in the morning, conducted him past the small ruined tower, or rather vestige of a tower, called by the country people the Kaim of Derncleugh.
The reader may recollect the description of this ruin in the twenty-seventh chapter, as the vault in which young Bertram, under the auspices of Meg Merrilies, witnessed the death of Hatteraick's lieutenant. The tradition of the country added ghostly terrors to the natural awe inspired by the situation of this place, which terrors the gipsies who so long inhabited the vicinity had probably invented, or at least propagated, for their own advantage. It was said that, during the times of the Galwegian independence, one Hanlon Mac-Dingawaie, brother to the reigning chief, Knarth Mac-Dingawaie, murdered his brother and sovereign, in order to usurp the principality from his infant nephew, and that, being pursued for vengeance by the faithful allies and retainers of the house, who espoused the cause of the lawful heir, he was compelled to retreat, with a few followers whom he had involved in his crime, to this impregnable tower called the Kaim of Derucleugh, where he defended himself until nearly reduced by famine, when, setting fire to the place, he and the small remaining garrison desperately perished by their own swords, rather than fall into the hands of their exasperated enemies. This tragedy, which, considering the wild times wherein it was placed, might have some foundation in truth, was larded with many legends of superstition and diablerie, so that most of the peasants of the neighbourhood, if benighted, would rather have chosen to make a considerable circuit than pass these haunted walls. The lights, often seen around the tower, when used as the rendezvous of the lawless characters by whom it was occasionally frequented, were accounted for, under authority of these tales of witchery, in a manner at once convenient for the private parties concerned and satisfactory to the public.
Now it must be confessed that our friend Sampson, although a profound scholar and mathematician, had not travelled so far in philosophy as to doubt the reality of witchcraft or apparitions. Born, indeed, at a time when a doubt in the existence of witches was interpreted as equivalent to a justification of their infernal practices, a belief of such legends had been impressed upon the Dominie as an article indivisible from his religious faith, and perhaps it would have been equally difficult to have induced him to doubt the one as the other. With these feelings, and in a thick misty day, which was already drawing to its close, Dominie Sampson did not pass the Kaim of Derncleugh without some feelings of tacit horror.
What, then, was his astonishment when, on passing the door—that door which was supposed to have been placed there by one of the latter Lairds of Ellangowan to prevent presumptuous strangers from incurring the dangers of the haunted vault—that door, supposed to be always locked, and the key of which was popularly said to be deposited with the presbytery—that door, that very door, opened suddenly, and the figure of Meg Merrilies, well known, though not seen for many a revolving year, was placed at once before the eyes of the startled Dominie! She stood immediately before him in the footpath, confronting him so absolutely that he could not avoid her except by fairly turning back, which his manhood prevented him from thinking of.
'I kenn'd ye wad be here,' she said, with her harsh and hollow voice;
'I ken wha ye seek; but ye maun do my bidding.'
'Get thee behind me!' said the alarmed Dominie. 'Avoid ye! Conjuro te, scelestissima, nequissima, spurcissima, iniquissima atque miserrima, conjuro te!!!'
Meg stood her ground against this tremendous volley of superlatives, which Sampson hawked up from the pit of his stomach and hurled at her in thunder. 'Is the carl daft,' she said, 'wi' his glamour?'
'Conjuro,' continued the Dominie, 'abjuro, contestor atque viriliter impero tibi!'
'What, in the name of Sathan, are ye feared for, wi' your French gibberish, that would make a dog sick? Listen, ye stickit stibbler, to what I tell ye, or ye sail rue it while there's a limb o' ye hings to anither! Tell Colonel Mannering that I ken he's seeking me. He kens, and I ken, that the blood will be wiped out, and the lost will be found,
And Bertram's right and Bertram's might
Shall meet on Ellangowan height.
Hae, there's a letter to him; I was gaun to send it in another way. I canna write mysell; but I hae them that will baith write and read, and ride and rin for me. Tell him the time's coming now, and the weird's dreed, and the wheel's turning. Bid him look at the stars as he has looked at them before. Will ye mind a' this?'
'Assuredly,' said the Dominie, 'I am dubious; for, woman, I am perturbed at thy words, and my flesh quakes to hear thee.'
'They'll do you nae ill though, and maybe muckle gude.'
'Avoid ye! I desire no good that comes by unlawful means.'
'Fule body that thou art,' said Meg, stepping up to him, with a frown of indignation that made her dark eyes flash like lamps from under her bent brows—'Fule body! if I meant ye wrang, couldna I clod ye ower that craig, and wad man ken how ye cam by your end mair than Frank Kennedy? Hear ye that, ye worricow?'
'In the name of all that is good,' said the Dominie, recoiling, and pointing his long pewter-headed walking cane like a javelin at the supposed sorceress—'in the name of all that is good, bide off hands! I will not be handled; woman, stand off, upon thine own proper peril! Desist, I say; I am strong; lo, I will resist!' Here his speech was cut short; for Meg, armed with supernatural strength (as the Dominie asserted), broke in upon his guard, put by a thrust which he made at her with his cane, and lifted him into the vault, 'as easily,' said he, 'as I could sway a Kitchen's Atlas.'
'Sit down there,' she said, pushing the half-throttled preacher with some violence against a broken chair—'sit down there and gather your wind and your senses, ye black barrow-tram o' the kirk that ye are. Are ye fou or fasting?'
'Fasting, from all but sin,' answered the Dominie, who, recovering his voice, and finding his exorcisms only served to exasperate the intractable sorceress, thought it best to affect complaisance and submission, inwardly conning over, however, the wholesome conjurations which he durst no longer utter aloud. But as the Dominie's brain was by no means equal to carry on two trains of ideas at the same time, a word or two of his mental exercise sometimes escaped and mingled with his uttered speech in a manner ludicrous enough, especially as the poor man shrunk himself together after every escape of the kind, from terror of the effect it might produce upon the irritable feelings of the witch.
Meg in the meanwhile went to a great black cauldron that was boiling on a fire on the floor, and, lifting the lid, an odour was diffused through the vault which, if the vapours of a witch's cauldron could in aught be trusted, promised better things than the hell-broth which such vessels are usually supposed to contain. It was, in fact, the savour of a goodly stew, composed of fowls, hares, partridges, and moor-game boiled in a large mess with potatoes, onions, and leeks, and from the size of the cauldron appeared to be prepared for half a dozen of people at least. 'So ye hae eat naething a' day?' said Meg, heaving a large portion of this mess into a brown dish and strewing it savourily with salt and pepper. [Footnote: See Note 4.]
'Nothing,' answered the Dominie, 'scelestissima!—that is, gudewife.'
'Hae then,' said she, placing the dish before him, 'there's what will warm your heart.'
'I do not hunger, malefica—that is to say, Mrs. Merrilies!' for he said unto himself,' the savour is sweet, but it hath been cooked by a Canidia or an Ericthoe.'
'If ye dinna eat instantly and put some saul in ye, by the bread and the salt, I'll put it down your throat wi' the cutty spoon, scaulding as it is, and whether ye will or no. Gape, sinner, and swallow!'
Sampson, afraid of eye of newt, and toe of frog, tigers' chaudrons, and so forth, had determined not to venture; but the smell of the stew was fast melting his obstinacy, which flowed from his chops as it were in streams of water, and the witch's threats decided him to feed. Hunger and fear are excellent casuists.
'Saul,' said Hunger, 'feasted with the witch of Endor.' 'And,' quoth Fear, 'the salt which she sprinkled upon the food showeth plainly it is not a necromantic banquet, in which that seasoning never occurs.' 'And, besides,' says Hunger, after the first spoonful, 'it is savoury and refreshing viands.'
'So ye like the meat?' said the hostess.
'Yea,' answered the Dominie, 'and I give thee thanks, sceleratissima!—which means, Mrs. Margaret.'
'Aweel, eat your fill; but an ye kenn'd how it was gotten ye maybe wadna like it sae weel.' Sampson's spoon dropped in the act of conveying its load to his mouth. 'There's been mony a moonlight watch to bring a' that trade thegither,' continued Meg; 'the folk that are to eat that dinner thought little o' your game laws.'
'Is that all?' thought Sampson, resuming his spoon and shovelling away manfully; 'I will not lack my food upon that argument.'
'Now ye maun tak a dram?'
'I will,' quoth Sampson, 'conjuro te—that is, I thank you heartily,' for he thought to himself, in for a penny in for a pound; and he fairly drank the witch's health in a cupful of brandy. When he had put this copestone upon Meg's good cheer, he felt, as he said, 'mightily elevated, and afraid of no evil which could befall unto him.'
'Will ye remember my errand now?' said Meg Merrilies; 'I ken by the cast o' your ee that ye're anither man than when you cam in.'
'I will, Mrs. Margaret,' repeated Sampson, stoutly; 'I will deliver unto him the sealed yepistle, and will add what you please to send by word of mouth.'
'Then I'll make it short,' says Meg. 'Tell him to look at the stars without fail this night, and to do what I desire him in that letter, as he would wish
That Bertram's right and Bertram's might
Should meet on Ellangowan height.
I have seen him twice when he saw na me; I ken when he was in this country first, and I ken what's brought him back again. Up an' to the gate! ye're ower lang here; follow me.'
Sampson followed the sibyl accordingly, who guided him about a quarter of a mile through the woods, by a shorter cut than he could have found for himself; then they entered upon the common, Meg still marching before him at a great pace, until she gained the top of a small hillock which overhung the road.
'Here,' she said, 'stand still here. Look how the setting sun breaks through yon cloud that's been darkening the lift a' day. See where the first stream o' light fa's: it's upon Donagild's round tower, the auldest tower in the Castle o' Ellangowan; that's no for naething! See as it's glooming to seaward abune yon sloop in the bay; that's no for naething neither. Here I stood on this very spot,' said she, drawing herself up so as not to lose one hair-breadth of her uncommon height, and stretching out her long sinewy arm and clenched hand—'here I stood when I tauld the last Laird o' Ellangowan what was coming on his house; and did that fa' to the ground? na, it hit even ower sair! And here, where I brake the wand of peace ower him, here I stand again, to bid God bless and prosper the just heir of Ellangowan that will sune be brought to his ain; and the best laird he shall be that Ellangowan has seen for three hundred years. I'll no live to see it, maybe; but there will be mony a blythe ee see it though mine be closed. And now, Abel Sampson, as ever ye lo'ed the house of Ellangowan, away wi' my message to the English Colonel, as if life and death were upon your haste!'
So saying, she turned suddenly from the amazed Dominie and regained with swift and long strides the shelter of the wood from which she had issued at the point where it most encroached upon the common. Sampson gazed after her for a moment in utter astonishment, and then obeyed her directions, hurrying to Woodbourne at a pace very unusual for him, exclaiming three times, 'Prodigious! prodigious! pro-di-gi-ous!'
CHAPTER XLVII
It is not madness
That I have utter'd, bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word, which madness
Would gambol from.
Hamlet.
As Mr. Sampson crossed the hall with a bewildered look, Mrs. Allan, the good housekeeper, who, with the reverent attention which is usually rendered to the clergy in Scotland, was on the watch for his return, sallied forth to meet him—'What's this o't now, Mr. Sampson, this is waur than ever! Ye'll really do yoursell some injury wi' these lang fasts; naething's sae hurtful to the stamach, Mr. Sampson. If ye would but put some peppermint draps in your pocket, or let Barnes cut ye a sandwich.'
'Avoid thee!' quoth the Dominie, his mind running still upon his interview with Meg Merrilies, and making for the dining-parlour.
'Na, ye needna gang in there, the cloth's been removed an hour syne, and the Colonel's at his wine; but just step into my room, I have a nice steak that the cook will do in a moment.'
'Exorciso te!' said Sampson; 'that is, I have dined.'
'Dined! it's impossible; wha can ye hae dined wi', you that gangs out nae gate?'
'With Beelzebub, I believe,' said the minister.
'Na, then he's bewitched for certain,' said the housekeeper, letting go her hold; 'he's bewitched, or he's daft, and ony way the Colonel maun just guide him his ain gate. Wae's me! Hech, sirs! It's a sair thing to see learning bring folk to this!' And with this compassionate ejaculation she retreated into her own premises.
The object of her commiseration had by this time entered the dining-parlour, where his appearance gave great surprise. He was mud up to the shoulders, and the natural paleness of his hue was twice as cadaverous as usual, through terror, fatigue, and perturbation of mind.
'What on earth is the meaning of this, Mr. Sampson?' said Mannering, who observed Miss Bertram looking much alarmed for her simple but attached friend.
'Exorciso,' said the Dominie.
'How, sir?' replied the astonished Colonel.
'I crave pardon, honourable sir! but my wits—-'
'Are gone a wool-gathering, I think; pray, Mr. Sampson, collect yourself, and let me know the meaning of all this.'
Sampson was about to reply, but finding his Latin formula of exorcism still came most readily to his tongue, he prudently desisted from the attempt, and put the scrap of paper which he had received from the gipsy into Mannering's hand, who broke the seal and read it with surprise. 'This seems to be some jest,' he said, 'and a very dull one.'
'It came from no jesting person,' said Mr. Sampson.
'From whom then did it come?' demanded Mannering.
The Dominie, who often displayed some delicacy of recollection in cases where Miss Bertram had an interest, remembered the painful circumstances connected with Meg Merrilies, looked at the young ladies, and remained silent. 'We will join you at the tea-table in an instant, Julia,' said the Colonel; 'I see that Mr. Sampson wishes to speak to me alone. And now they are gone, what, in Heaven's name, Mr. Sampson, is the meaning of all this?'
'It may be a message from Heaven,' said the Dominie, 'but it came by Beelzebub's postmistress. It was that witch, Meg Merrilies, who should have been burned with a tar-barrel twenty years since for a harlot, thief, witch, and gipsy.'
'Are you sure it was she?' said the Colonel with great interest.
'Sure, honoured sir? Of a truth she is one not to be forgotten, the like o' Meg Merrilies is not to be seen in any land.'
The Colonel paced the room rapidly, cogitating with himself. 'To send out to apprehend her; but it is too distant to send to Mac-Morlan, and Sir Robert Hazlewood is a pompous coxcomb; besides, the chance of not finding her upon the spot, or that the humour of silence that seized her before may again return. No, I will not, to save being thought a fool, neglect the course she points out. Many of her class set out by being impostors and end by becoming enthusiasts, or hold a kind of darkling conduct between both lines, unconscious almost when they are cheating themselves or when imposing on others. Well, my course is a plain one at any rate; and if my efforts are fruitless, it shall not be owing to over-jealousy of my own character for wisdom.'
With this he rang the bell, and, ordering Barnes into his private sitting-room, gave him some orders, with the result of which the reader may be made hereafter acquainted.
We must now take up another adventure, which is also to be woven into the story of this remarkable day.
Charles Hazlewood had not ventured to make a visit at Woodbourne during the absence of the Colonel. Indeed, Mannering's whole behaviour had impressed upon him an opinion that this would be disagreeable; and such was the ascendency which the successful soldier and accomplished gentleman had attained over the young man's conduct, that in no respect would he have ventured to offend him. He saw, or thought he saw, in Colonel Mannering's general conduct, an approbation of his attachment to Miss Bertram. But then he saw still more plainly the impropriety of any attempt at a private correspondence, of which his parents could not be supposed to approve, and he respected this barrier interposed betwixt them both on Mannering's account and as he was the liberal and zealous protector of Miss Bertram. 'No,' said he to himself, 'I will not endanger the comfort of my Lucy's present retreat until I can offer her a home of her own.'
With this valorous resolution, which he maintained although his horse, from constant habit, turned his head down the avenue of Woodbourne, and although he himself passed the lodge twice every day, Charles Hazlewood withstood a strong inclination to ride down just to ask how the young ladies were, and whether he could be of any service to them during Colonel Mannering's absence. But on the second occasion he felt the temptation so severe that he resolved not to expose himself to it a third time; and, contenting himself with sending hopes and inquiries and so forth to Woodbourne, he resolved to make a visit long promised to a family at some distance, and to return in such time as to be one of the earliest among Mannering's visitors who should congratulate his safe arrival from his distant and hazardous expedition to Edinburgh. Accordingly he made out his visit, and, having arranged matters so as to be informed within a few hours after Colonel Mannering reached home, he finally resolved to take leave of the friends with whom he had spent the intervening time, with the intention of dining at Woodbourne, where he was in a great measure domesticated; and this (for he thought much more deeply on the subject than was necessary) would, he flattered himself, appear a simple, natural, and easy mode of conducting himself.
Fate, however, of which lovers make so many complaints, was in this case unfavourable to Charles Hazlewood. His horse's shoes required an alteration, in consequence of the fresh weather having decidedly commenced. The lady of the house where he was a visitor chose to indulge in her own room till a very late breakfast hour. His friend also insisted on showing him a litter of puppies which his favourite pointer bitch had produced that morning. The colours had occasioned some doubts about the paternity—a weighty question of legitimacy, to the decision of which Hazlewood's opinion was called in as arbiter between his friend and his groom, and which inferred in its consequences which of the litter should be drowned, which saved. Besides, the Laird himself delayed our young lover's departure for a considerable time, endeavouring, with long and superfluous rhetoric, to insinuate to Sir Robert Hazlewood, through the medium of his son, his own particular ideas respecting the line of a meditated turnpike road. It is greatly to the shame of our young lover's apprehension that, after the tenth reiterated account of the matter, he could not see the advantage to be obtained by the proposed road passing over the Lang Hirst, Windy Knowe, the Goodhouse Park, Hailziecroft, and then crossing the river at Simon's Pool, and so by the road to Kippletringan; and the less eligible line pointed out by the English surveyor, which would go clear through the main enclosures at Hazlewood, and cut within a mile or nearly so of the house itself, destroying the privacy and pleasure, as his informer contended, of the grounds. In short, the adviser (whose actual interest was to have the bridge built as near as possible to a farm of his own) failed in every effort to attract young Hazlewood's attention until he mentioned by chance that the proposed line was favoured by 'that fellow Glossin,' who pretended to take a lead in the county. On a sudden young Hazlewood became attentive and interested; and, having satisfied himself which was the line that Glossin patronised, assured his friend it should not be his fault if his father did not countenance any other instead of that. But these various interruptions consumed the morning. Hazlewood got on horseback at least three hours later than he intended, and, cursing fine ladies, pointers, puppies, and turnpike acts of parliament, saw himself detained beyond the time when he could with propriety intrude upon the family at Woodbourne.
He had passed, therefore, the turn of the road which led to that mansion, only edified by the distant appearance of the blue smoke curling against the pale sky of the winter evening, when he thought he beheld the Dominie taking a footpath for the house through the woods. He called after him, but in vain; for that honest gentleman, never the most susceptible of extraneous impressions, had just that moment parted from Meg Merrilies, and was too deeply wrapt up in pondering upon her vaticinations to make any answer to Hazlewood's call. He was therefore obliged to let him proceed without inquiry after the health of the young ladies, or any other fishing question, to which he might by good chance have had an answer returned wherein Miss Bertram's name might have been mentioned. All cause for haste was now over, and, slackening the reins upon his horse's neck, he permitted the animal to ascend at his own leisure the steep sandy track between two high banks, which, rising to a considerable height, commanded at length an extensive view of the neighbouring country.
Hazlewood was, however, so far from eagerly looking forward to this prospect, though it had the recommendation that great part of the land was his father's, and must necessarily be his own, that his head still turned backward towards the chimneys of Woodbourne, although at every step his horse made the difficulty of employing his eyes in that direction become greater. From the reverie in which he was sunk he was suddenly roused by a voice, too harsh to be called female, yet too shrill for a man: 'What's kept you on the road sae lang? Maun ither folk do your wark?'
He looked up. The spokeswoman was very tall, had a voluminous handkerchief rolled round her head, grizzled hair flowing in elf-locks from beneath it, a long red cloak, and a staff in her hand, headed with a sort of spear-point; it was, in short, Meg Merrilies. Hazlewood had never seen this remarkable figure before; he drew up his reins in astonishment at her appearance, and made a full stop. 'I think,' continued she, 'they that hae taen interest in the house of Ellangowan suld sleep nane this night; three men hae been seeking ye, and you are gaun hame to sleep in your bed. D' ye think if the lad-bairn fa's, the sister will do weel? Na, na!'
'I don't understand you, good woman,' said Hazlewood. 'If you speak of Miss—-, I mean of any of the late Ellangowan family, tell me what I can do for them.'
'Of the late Ellangowan family?' she answered with great vehemence—'of the LATE Ellangowan family! and when was there ever, or when will there ever be, a family of Ellangowan but bearing the gallant name of the bauld Bertrams?'
'But what do you mean, good woman?'
'I am nae good woman; a' the country kens I am bad eneugh, and baith they and I may be sorry eneugh that I am nae better. But I can do what good women canna, and daurna do. I can do what would freeze the blood o' them that is bred in biggit wa's for naething but to bind bairns' heads and to hap them in the cradle. Hear me: the guard's drawn off at the custom-house at Portanferry, and it's brought up to Hazlewood House by your father's orders, because he thinks his house is to be attacked this night by the smugglers. There's naebody means to touch his house; he has gude blood and gentle blood—I say little o' him for himsell—but there's naebody thinks him worth meddling wi'. Send the horsemen back to their post, cannily and quietly; see an they winna hae wark the night, ay will they: the guns will flash and the swords will glitter in the braw moon.'
'Good God! what do you mean?' said young Hazlewood; 'your words and manner would persuade me you are mad, and yet there is a strange combination in what you say.'
'I am not mad!' exclaimed the gipsy; 'I have been imprisoned for mad—scourged for mad—banished for mad—but mad I am not. Hear ye, Charles Hazlewood of Hazlewood: d'ye bear malice against him that wounded you?'
'No, dame, God forbid; my arm is quite well, and I have always said the shot was discharged by accident. I should be glad to tell the young man so himself.'
'Then do what I bid ye,' answered Meg Merrilies, 'and ye'll do him mair gude than ever he did you ill; for if he was left to his ill-wishers he would be a bloody corpse ere morn, or a banished man; but there's Ane abune a'. Do as I bid you; send back the soldiers to Portanferry. There's nae mair fear o' Hazlewood House than there's o' Cruffel Fell.' And she vanished with her usual celerity of pace.
It would seem that the appearance of this female, and the mixture of frenzy and enthusiasm in her manner, seldom failed to produce the strongest impression upon those whom she addressed. Her words, though wild, were too plain and intelligible for actual madness, and yet too vehement and extravagant for sober-minded communication. She seemed acting under the influence of an imagination rather strongly excited than deranged; and it is wonderful how palpably the difference in such cases is impressed upon the mind of the auditor. This may account for the attention with which her strange and mysterious hints were heard and acted upon. It is certain, at least, that young Hazlewood was strongly impressed by her sudden appearance and imperative tone. He rode to Hazlewood at a brisk pace. It had been dark for some time before he reached the house, and on his arrival there he saw a confirmation of what the sibyl had hinted.
Thirty dragoon horses stood under a shed near the offices, with their bridles linked together. Three or four soldiers attended as a guard, while others stamped up and down with their long broadswords and heavy boots in front of the house. Hazlewood asked a non-commissioned officer from whence they came.
'From Portanferry.'
'Had they left any guard there?'
'No; they had been drawn off by order of Sir Robert Hazlewood for defence of his house against an attack which was threatened by the smugglers.'
Charles Hazlewood instantly went in quest of his father, and, having paid his respects to him upon his return, requested to know upon what account he had thought it necessary to send for a military escort. Sir Robert assured his son in reply that, from the information, intelligence, and tidings which had been communicated to, and laid before him, he had the deepest reason to believe, credit, and be convinced that a riotous assault would that night be attempted and perpetrated against Hazlewood House by a set of smugglers, gipsies, and other desperadoes.
'And what, my dear sir,' said his son, 'should direct the fury of such persons against ours rather than any other house in the country?'
'I should rather think, suppose, and be of opinion, sir,' answered Sir Robert, 'with deference to your wisdom and experience, that on these occasions and times the vengeance of such persons is directed or levelled against the most important and distinguished in point of rank, talent, birth, and situation who have checked, interfered with, and discountenanced their unlawful and illegal and criminal actions or deeds.'
Young Hazlewood, who knew his father's foible, answered, that the cause of his surprise did not lie where Sir Robert apprehended, but that he only wondered they should think of attacking a house where there were so many servants, and where a signal to the neighbouring tenants could call in such strong assistance; and added, that he doubted much whether the reputation of the family would not in some degree suffer from calling soldiers from their duty at the custom-house to protect them, as if they were not sufficiently strong to defend themselves upon any ordinary occasion. He even hinted that, in case their house's enemies should observe that this precaution had been taken unnecessarily, there would be no end of their sarcasms.
Sir Robert Hazlewood was rather puzzled at this intimation, for, like most dull men, he heartily hated and feared ridicule. He gathered himself up and looked with a sort of pompous embarrassment, as if he wished to be thought to despise the opinion of the public, which in reality he dreaded.
'I really should have thought,' he said, 'that the injury which had already been aimed at my house in your person, being the next heir and representative of the Hazlewood family, failing me—I should have thought and believed, I say, that this would have justified me sufficiently in the eyes of the most respectable and the greater part of the people for taking such precautions as are calculated to prevent and impede a repetition of outrage.'
'Really, sir,' said Charles, 'I must remind you of what I have often said before, that I am positive the discharge of the piece was accidental.'
'Sir, it was not accidental,' said his father, angrily; 'but you will be wiser than your elders.'
'Really, sir,' replied Hazlewood, 'in what so intimately concerns myself—-'
'Sir, it does not concern you but in a very secondary degree; that is, it does not concern you, as a giddy young fellow who takes pleasure in contradicting his father; but it concerns the country, sir, and the county, sir, and the public, sir, and the kingdom of Scotland, in so far as the interest of the Hazlewood family, sir, is committed and interested and put in peril, in, by, and through you, sir. And the fellow is in safe custody, and Mr. Glossin thinks—-'
'Mr. Glossin, sir?'
'Yes, sir, the gentleman who has purchased Ellangowan; you know who I mean, I suppose?'
'Yes, sir,' answered the young man; 'but I should hardly have expected to hear you quote such authority. Why, this fellow—all the world knows him to be sordid, mean, tricking, and I suspect him to be worse. And you yourself, my dear sir, when did you call such a person a gentleman in your life before?'
'Why, Charles, I did not mean gentleman in the precise sense and meaning, and restricted and proper use, to which, no doubt, the phrase ought legitimately to be confined; but I meant to use it relatively, as marking something of that state to which he has elevated and raised himself; as designing, in short, a decent and wealthy and estimable sort of a person.'
'Allow me to ask, sir,' said Charles, 'if it was by this man's orders that the guard was drawn from Portanferry?'
'Sir,' replied the Baronet, 'I do apprehend that Mr. Glossin would not presume to give orders, or even an opinion, unless asked, in a matter in which Hazlewood House and the house of Hazlewood—meaning by the one this mansion-house of my family, and by the other, typically, metaphorically, and parabolically, the family itself,—I say, then, where the house of Hazlewood, or Hazlewood House, was so immediately concerned.'
'I presume, however, sir,' said the son, 'this Glossin approved of the proposal?'
'Sir,' replied his father, 'I thought it decent and right and proper to consult him as the nearest magistrate as soon as report of the intended outrage reached my ears; and although he declined, out of deference and respect, as became our relative situations, to concur in the order, yet he did entirely approve of my arrangement.'
At this moment a horse's feet were heard coming very fast up the avenue. In a few minutes the door opened, and Mr. Mac-Morlan presented himself. 'I am under great concern to intrude, Sir Robert, but—-'
'Give me leave, Mr. Mac-Morlan,' said Sir Robert, with a gracious flourish of welcome; 'this is no intrusion, sir; for, your situation as sheriff-substitute calling upon you to attend to the peace of the county, and you, doubtless, feeling yourself particularly called upon to protect Hazlewood House, you have an acknowledged and admitted and undeniable right, sir, to enter the house of the first gentleman in Scotland uninvited—always presuming you to be called there by the duty of your office.'
'It is indeed the duty of my office,' said Mac-Morlan, who waited with impatience an opportunity to speak, 'that makes me an intruder.'
'No intrusion!' reiterated the Baronet, gracefully waving his hand.
'But permit me to say, Sir Robert,' said the sheriff-substitute, 'I do not come with the purpose of remaining here, but to recall these soldiers to Portanferry, and to assure you that I will answer for the safety of your house.'
'To withdraw the guard from Hazlewood House!' exclaimed the proprietor in mingled displeasure and surprise; 'and YOU will be answerable for it! And, pray, who are you, sir, that I should take your security and caution and pledge, official or personal, for the safety of Hazlewood House? I think, sir, and believe, sir, and am of opinion, sir, that if any one of these family pictures were deranged or destroyed or injured it would be difficult for me to make up the loss upon the guarantee which you so obligingly offer me.'
'In that case I shall be sorry for it, Sir Robert,' answered the downright Mac-Morlan; 'but I presume I may escape the pain of feeling my conduct the cause of such irreparable loss, as I can assure you there will be no attempt upon Hazlewood House whatever, and I have received information which induces me to suspect that the rumour was put afloat merely in order to occasion the removal of the soldiers from Portanferry. And under this strong belief and conviction I must exert my authority as sheriff and chief magistrate of police to order the whole, or greater part of them, back again. I regret much that by my accidental absence a good deal of delay has already taken place, and we shall not now reach Portanferry until it is late.'
As Mr. Mac-Morlan was the superior magistrate, and expressed himself peremptory in the purpose of acting as such, the Baronet, though highly offended, could only say, 'Very well, sir; it is very well. Nay, sir, take them all with you; I am far from desiring any to be left here, sir. We, sir, can protect ourselves, sir. But you will have the goodness to observe, sir, that you are acting on your own proper risk, sir, and peril, sir, and responsibility, sir, if anything shall happen or befall to Hazlewood House, sir, or the inhabitants, sir, or to the furniture and paintings, sir.'
'I am acting to the best of my judgment and information, Sir Robert,' said Mac-Morlan, 'and I must pray of you to believe so, and to pardon me accordingly. I beg you to observe it is no time for ceremony; it is already very late.'
But Sir Robert, without deigning to listen to his apologies, immediately employed himself with much parade in arming and arraying his domestics. Charles Hazlewood longed to accompany the military, which were about to depart for Portanferry, and which were now drawn up and mounted by direction and under the guidance of Mr. Mac-Morlan, as the civil magistrate. But it would have given just pain and offence to his father to have left him at a moment when he conceived himself and his mansion-house in danger. Young Hazlewood therefore gazed from a window with suppressed regret and displeasure, until he heard the officer give the word of command—'From the right to the front, by files, m-a-rch. Leading file, to the right wheel. Trot.' The whole party of soldiers then getting into a sharp and uniform pace, were soon lost among the trees, and the noise of the hoofs died speedily away in the distance.
CHAPTER XLVIII
Wi' coulters and wi' forehammers
We garr'd the bars bang merrily,
Until we came to the inner prison,
Where Willie o' Kinmont he did lie.
Old Border Ballad.
We return to Portanferry, and to Bertram and his honest-hearted friend, whom we left most innocent inhabitants of a place built for the guilty. The slumbers of the farmer were as sound as it was possible.
But Bertram's first heavy sleep passed away long before midnight, nor could he again recover that state of oblivion. Added to the uncertain and uncomfortable state of his mind, his body felt feverish and oppressed. This was chiefly owing to the close and confined air of the small apartment in which they slept. After enduring for some time the broiling and suffocating feeling attendant upon such an atmosphere, he rose to endeavour to open the window of the apartment, and thus to procure a change of air. Alas! the first trial reminded him that he was in jail, and that the building being contrived for security, not comfort, the means of procuring fresh air were not left at the disposal of the wretched inhabitants.
Disappointed in this attempt, he stood by the unmanageable window for some time. Little Wasp, though oppressed with the fatigue of his journey on the preceding day, crept out of bed after his master, and stood by him rubbing his shaggy coat against his legs, and expressing by a murmuring sound the delight which he felt at being restored to him. Thus accompanied, and waiting until the feverish feeling which at present agitated his blood should subside into a desire for warmth and slumber, Bertram remained for some time looking out upon the sea.
The tide was now nearly full, and dashed hoarse and near below the base of the building. Now and then a large wave reached even the barrier or bulwark which defended the foundation of the house, and was flung up on it with greater force and noise than those which only broke upon the sand. Far in the distance, under the indistinct light of a hazy and often overclouded moon, the ocean rolled its multitudinous complication of waves, crossing, bursting, and mingling with each other.
'A wild and dim spectacle,' said Bertram to himself, 'like those crossing tides of fate which have tossed me about the world from my infancy upwards. When will this uncertainty cease, and how soon shall I be permitted to look out for a tranquil home, where I may cultivate in quiet, and without dread and perplexity, those arts of peace from which my cares have been hitherto so forcibly diverted? The ear of Fancy, it is said, can discover the voice of sea-nymphs and tritons amid the bursting murmurs of the ocean; would that I could do so, and that some siren or Proteus would arise from these billows to unriddle for me the strange maze of fate in which I am so deeply entangled! Happy friend!' he said, looking at the bed where Dinmont had deposited his bulky person, 'thy cares are confined to the narrow round of a healthy and thriving occupation! Thou canst lay them aside at pleasure, and enjoy the deep repose of body and mind which wholesome labour has prepared for thee!'
At this moment his reflections were broken by little Wasp, who, attempting to spring up against the window, began to yelp and bark most furiously. The sounds reached Dinmont's ears, but without dissipating the illusion which had transported him from this wretched apartment to the free air of his own green hills. 'Hoy, Yarrow, man! far yaud, far yaud!' he muttered between his teeth, imagining, doubtless, that he was calling to his sheep-dog, and hounding him in shepherds' phrase against some intruders on the grazing. The continued barking of the terrier within was answered by the angry challenge of the mastiff in the courtyard, which had for a long time been silent, excepting only an occasional short and deep note, uttered when the moon shone suddenly from among the clouds. Now his clamour was continued and furious, and seemed to be excited by some disturbance distinct from the barking of Wasp, which had first given him the alarm, and which, with much trouble, his master had contrived to still into an angry note of low growling.
At last Bertram, whose attention was now fully awakened, conceived that he saw a boat upon the sea, and heard in good earnest the sound of oars and of human voices mingling with the dash of the billows. 'Some benighted fishermen,' he thought, 'or perhaps some of the desperate traders from the Isle of Man. They are very hardy, however, to approach so near to the custom-house, where there must be sentinels. It is a large boat, like a long-boat, and full of people; perhaps it belongs to the revenue service.' Bertram was confirmed in this last opinion by observing that the boat made for a little quay which ran into the sea behind the custom-house, and, jumping ashore one after another, the crew, to the number of twenty hands, glided secretly up a small lane which divided the custom-house from the bridewell, and disappeared from his sight, leaving only two persons to take care of the boat.
The dash of these men's oars at first, and latterly the suppressed sounds of their voices, had excited the wrath of the wakeful sentinel in the courtyard, who now exalted his deep voice into such a horrid and continuous din that it awakened his brute master, as savage a ban-dog as himself. His cry from a window, of 'How now, Tearum, what's the matter, sir? down, d—n ye, down!' produced no abatement of Tearum's vociferation, which in part prevented his master from hearing the sounds of alarm which his ferocious vigilance was in the act of challenging. But the mate of the two-legged Cerberus was gifted with sharper ears than her husband. She also was now at the window. 'B—t ye, gae down and let loose the dog,' she said; 'they're sporting the door of the custom-house, and the auld sap at Hazlewood House has ordered off the guard. But ye hae nae mair heart than a cat.' And down the Amazon sallied to perform the task herself, while her helpmate, more jealous of insurrection within doors than of storm from without, went from cell to cell to see that the inhabitants of each were carefully secured.
These latter sounds with which we have made the reader acquainted had their origin in front of the house, and were consequently imperfectly heard by Bertram, whose apartment, as we have already noticed, looked from the back part of the building upon the sea. He heard, however, a stir and tumult in the house, which did not seem to accord with the stern seclusion of a prison at the hour of midnight, and, connecting them with the arrival of an armed boat at that dead hour, could not but suppose that something extraordinary was about to take place. In this belief he shook Dinmont by the shoulder. 'Eh! Ay! Oh! Ailie, woman, it's no time to get up yet,' groaned the sleeping man of the mountains. More roughly shaken, however, he gathered himself up, shook his ears, and asked, 'In the name of Providence what's the matter?'
'That I can't tell you,' replied Bertram; 'but either the place is on fire or some extraordinary thing is about to happen. Are you not sensible of a smell of fire? Do you not hear what a noise there is of clashing doors within the house and of hoarse voices, murmurs, and distant shouts on the outside? Upon my word, I believe something very extraordinary has taken place. Get up, for the love of Heaven, and let us be on our guard.'
Dinmont rose at the idea of danger, as intrepid and undismayed as any of his ancestors when the beacon-light was kindled. 'Od, Captain, this is a queer place! they winna let ye out in the day, and they winna let ye sleep in the night. Deil, but it wad break my heart in a fortnight. But, Lordsake, what a racket they're making now! Od, I wish we had some light. Wasp, Wasp, whisht, hinny; whisht, my bonnie man, and let's hear what they're doing. Deil's in ye, will ye whisht?'
They sought in vain among the embers the means of lighting their candle, and the noise without still continued. Dinmont in his turn had recourse to the window—'Lordsake, Captain! come here. Od, they hae broken the custom-house!'
Bertram hastened to the window, and plainly saw a miscellaneous crowd of smugglers, and blackguards of different descriptions, some carrying lighted torches, others bearing packages and barrels down the lane to the boat that was lying at the quay, to which two or three other fisher-boats were now brought round. They were loading each of these in their turn, and one or two had already put off to seaward. 'This speaks for itself,' said Bertram; 'but I fear something worse has happened. Do you perceive a strong smell of smoke, or is it my fancy?'
'Fancy?' answered Dinmont, 'there's a reek like a killogie. Od, if they burn the custom-house it will catch here, and we'll lunt like a tar-barrel a' thegither. Eh! it wad be fearsome to be burnt alive for naething, like as if ane had been a warlock! Mac-Guffog, hear ye!' roaring at the top of his voice; 'an ye wad ever hae a haill bane in your skin, let's out, man, let's out!'
The fire began now to rise high, and thick clouds of smoke rolled past the window at which Bertram and Dinmont were stationed. Sometimes, as the wind pleased, the dim shroud of vapour hid everything from their sight; sometimes a red glare illuminated both land and sea, and shone full on the stern and fierce figures who, wild with ferocious activity, were engaged in loading the boats. The fire was at length triumphant, and spouted in jets of flame out at each window of the burning building, while huge flakes of flaming materials came driving on the wind against the adjoining prison, and rolling a dark canopy of smoke over all the neighbourhood. The shouts of a furious mob resounded far and wide; for the smugglers in their triumph were joined by all the rabble of the little town and neighbourhood, now aroused and in complete agitation, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, some from interest in the free trade, and most from the general love of mischief and tumult natural to a vulgar populace.
Bertram began to be seriously anxious for their fate. There was no stir in the house; it seemed as if the jailor had deserted his charge, and left the prison with its wretched inhabitants to the mercy of the conflagration which was spreading towards them. In the meantime a new and fierce attack was heard upon the outer gate of the correction house, which, battered with sledge-hammers and crows, was soon forced. The keeper, as great a coward as a bully, with his more ferocious wife, had fled; their servants readily surrendered the keys. The liberated prisoners, celebrating their deliverance with the wildest yells of joy, mingled among the mob which had given them freedom.
In the midst of the confusion that ensued three or four of the principal smugglers hurried to the apartment of Bertram with lighted torches, and armed with cutlasses and pistols. 'Der deyvil,' said the leader, 'here's our mark!' and two of them seized on Bertram; but one whispered in his ear,' Make no resistance till you are in the street.' The same individual found an instant to say to Dinmont—'Follow your friend, and help when you see the time come.'
In the hurry of the moment Dinmont obeyed and followed close. The two smugglers dragged Bertram along the passage, downstairs, through the courtyard, now illuminated by the glare of fire, and into the narrow street to which the gate opened, where in the confusion the gang were necessarily in some degree separated from each other. A rapid noise, as of a body of horse advancing, seemed to add to the disturbance. 'Hagel and wetter, what is that?' said the leader; 'keep together, kinder; look to the prisoner.' But in spite of his charge the two who held Bertram were the last of the party.
The sounds and signs of violence were heard in front. The press became furiously agitated, while some endeavoured to defend themselves, others to escape; shots were fired, and the glittering broadswords of the dragoons began to appear flashing above the heads of the rioters. 'Now,' said the warning whisper of the man who held Bertram's left arm, the same who had spoken before, 'shake off that fellow and follow me.'
Bertram, exerting his strength suddenly and effectually, easily burst from the grasp of the man who held his collar on the right side. The fellow attempted to draw a pistol, but was prostrated by a blow of Dinmont's fist, which an ox could hardly have received without the same humiliation. 'Follow me quick,' said the friendly partizan, and dived through a very narrow and dirty lane which led from the main street.
No pursuit took place. The attention of the smugglers had been otherwise and very disagreeably engaged by the sudden appearance of Mac-Morlan and the party of horse. The loud, manly voice of the provincial magistrate was heard proclaiming the Riot Act, and charging 'all those unlawfully assembled to disperse at their own proper peril.' This interruption would, indeed, have happened in time sufficient to have prevented the attempt, had not the magistrate received upon the road some false information which led him to think that the smugglers were to land at the bay of Ellangowan. Nearly two hours were lost in consequence of this false intelligence, which it may be no lack of charity to suppose that Glossin, so deeply interested in the issue of that night's daring attempt, had contrived to throw in Mac-Morlan's way, availing himself of the knowledge that the soldiers had left Hazlewood House, which would soon reach an ear so anxious as his.
In the meantime, Bertram followed his guide, and was in his turn followed by Dinmont. The shouts of the mob, the trampling of the horses, the dropping pistol-shots, sunk more and more faintly upon their ears, when at the end of the dark lane they found a post-chaise with four horses. 'Are you here, in God's name?' said the guide to the postilion who drove the leaders.
'Ay, troth am I,' answered Jock Jabos, 'and I wish I were ony gate else.'
'Open the carriage then. You, gentlemen, get into it; in a short time you'll be in a place of safety, and (to Bertram) remember your promise to the gipsy wife!'
Bertram, resolving to be passive in the hands of a person who had just rendered him such a distinguished piece of service, got into the chaise as directed. Dinmont followed; Wasp, who had kept close by them, sprung in at the same time, and the carriage drove off very fast. 'Have a care o' me,' said Dinmont, 'but this is the queerest thing yet! Od, I trust they'll no coup us. And then what's to come o' Dumple? I would rather be on his back than in the Deuke's coach, God bless him.'
Bertram observed, that they could not go at that rapid rate to any very great distance without changing horses, and that they might insist upon remaining till daylight at the first inn they stopped at, or at least upon being made acquainted with the purpose and termination of their journey, and Mr. Dinmont might there give directions about his faithful horse, which would probably be safe at the stables where he had left him. 'Aweel, aweel, e'en sae be it for Dandie. Od, if we were ance out o' this trindling kist o' a thing, I am thinking they wad find it hard wark to gar us gang ony gate but where we liked oursells.'
While he thus spoke the carriage, making a sudden turn, showed them through the left window the village at some distance, still widely beaconed by the fire, which, having reached a store-house wherein spirits were deposited, now rose high into the air, a wavering column of brilliant light. They had not long time to admire this spectacle, for another turn of the road carried them into a close lane between plantations, through which the chaise proceeded in nearly total darkness, but with unabated speed.
CHAPTER XLIX
The night drave on wi' sangs and clatter,
And aye the ale was growing better
Tam o'Shanter.
We must now return to Woodbourne, which, it may be remembered, we left just after the Colonel had given some directions to his confidential servant. When he returned, his absence of mind, and an unusual expression of thought and anxiety upon his features, struck the ladies, whom he joined in the drawing-room. Mannering was not, however, a man to be questioned, even by those whom he most loved, upon the cause of the mental agitation which these signs expressed. The hour of tea arrived, and the party were partaking of that refreshment in silence when a carriage drove up to the door, and the bell announced the arrival of a visitor. 'Surely,' said Mannering, 'it is too soon by some hours.'
There was a short pause, when Barnes, opening the door of the saloon, announced Mr. Pleydell. In marched the lawyer, whose well-brushed black coat and well-powdered wig, together with his point ruffles, brown silk stockings, highly-varnished shoes, and gold buckles, exhibited the pains which the old gentleman had taken to prepare his person for the ladies' society. He was welcomed by Mannering with a hearty shake by the hand. 'The very man I wished to see at this moment!'
'Yes,' said the Counsellor, 'I told you I would take the first opportunity; so I have ventured to leave the court for a week in session time—no common sacrifice; but I had a notion I could be useful, and I was to attend a proof here about the same time. But will you not introduce me to the young ladies? Ah! there is one I should have known at once from her family likeness! Miss Lucy Bertram, my love, I am most happy to see you.' And he folded her in his arms, and gave her a hearty kiss on each side of the face, to which Lucy submitted in blushing resignation.
'On n'arrete pas dans un si beau chemin,' continued the gay old gentleman, and, as the Colonel presented him to Julia, took the same liberty with that fair lady's cheek. Julia laughed, coloured, and disengaged herself. 'I beg a thousand pardons,' said the lawyer, with a bow which was not at all professionally awkward; 'age and old fashions give privileges, and I can hardly say whether I am most sorry just now at being too well entitled to claim them at all, or happy in having such an opportunity to exercise them so agreeably.'
'Upon my word, sir,' said Miss Mannering, laughing, 'if you make such flattering apologies we shall begin to doubt whether we can admit you to shelter yourself under your alleged qualifications.'
'I can assure you, Julia,' said the Colonel, 'you are perfectly right. My friend the Counsellor is a dangerous person; the last time I had the pleasure of seeing him he was closeted with a fair lady who had granted him a tete-a-tete at eight in the morning.'
'Ay, but, Colonel,' said the Counsellor, 'you should add, I was more indebted to my chocolate than my charms for so distinguished a favour from a person of such propriety of demeanour as Mrs. Rebecca.'
'And that should remind me, Mr. Pleydell,' said Julia, 'to offer you tea; that is, supposing you have dined.'
'Anything, Miss Mannering, from your hands,' answered the gallant jurisconsult; 'yes, I have dined; that is to say, as people dine at a Scotch inn.'
'And that is indifferently enough,' said the Colonel, with his hand upon the bell-handle; 'give me leave to order something.'
'Why, to say truth, 'replied Mr. Pleydell, 'I had rather not. I have been inquiring into that matter, for you must know I stopped an instant below to pull off my boot-hose, "a world too wide for my shrunk shanks,"' glancing down with some complacency upon limbs which looked very well for his time of life, 'and I had some conversation with your Barnes and a very intelligent person whom I presume to be the housekeeper; and it was settled among us, tota re perspecta,—I beg Miss Mannering's pardon for my Latin,—that the old lady should add to your light family supper the more substantial refreshment of a brace of wild ducks. I told her (always under deep submission) my poor thoughts about the sauce, which concurred exactly with her own; and, if you please, I would rather wait till they are ready before eating anything solid.'
'And we will anticipate our usual hour of supper,' said the Colonel.
'With all my heart,' said Pleydell, 'providing I do not lose the ladies' company a moment the sooner. I am of counsel with my old friend Burnet; [Footnote: See Note 5] I love the coena, the supper of the ancients, the pleasant meal and social glass that wash out of one's mind the cobwebs that business or gloom have been spinning in our brains all day.'
The vivacity of Mr. Pleydell's look and manner, and the quietness with which he made himself at home on the subject of his little epicurean comforts, amused the ladies, but particularly Miss Mannering, who immediately gave the Counsellor a great deal of flattering attention; and more pretty things were said on both sides during the service of the tea-table than we have leisure to repeat.
As soon as this was over, Mannering led the Counsellor by the arm into a small study which opened from the saloon, and where, according to the custom of the family, there were always lights and a good fire in the evening.
'I see,' said Mr. Pleydell, 'you have got something to tell me about the Ellangowan business. Is it terrestrial or celestial? What says my military Albumazar? Have you calculated the course of futurity? have you consulted your ephemerides, your almochoden, your almuten?'
'No, truly, Counsellor,' replied Mannering, 'you are the only Ptolemy I intend to resort to upon the present occasion. A second Prospero, I have broken my staff and drowned my book far beyond plummet depth. But I have great news notwithstanding. Meg Merrilies, our Egyptian sibyl, has appeared to the Dominie this very day, and, as I conjecture, has frightened the honest man not a little.'
'Indeed?'
'Ay, and she has done me the honour to open a correspondence with me, supposing me to be as deep in astrological mysteries as when we first met. Here is her scroll, delivered to me by the Dominie.'
Pleydell put on his spectacles. 'A vile greasy scrawl, indeed; and the letters are uncial or semi-uncial, as somebody calls your large text hand, and in size and perpendicularity resemble the ribs of a roasted pig; I can hardly make it out.'
'Read aloud,' said Mannering.
'I will try,' answered the Lawyer. '"YOU ARE A GOOD SEEKER, BUT A BAD
FINDER; YOU SET YOURSELF TO PROP A FALLING HOUSE, BUT HAD A GEY GUESS
IT WOULD RISE AGAIN. LEND YOUR HAND TO THE WORK THAT'S NEAR, AS YOU
LENT YOUR EE TO THE WEIRD THAT WAS FAR. HAVE A CARRIAGE THIS NIGHT BY
TEN O'CLOCK AT THE END OF THE CROOKED DYKES AT PORTANFERRY, AND LET IT
BRING THE FOLK TO WOODBOURNE THAT SHALL ASK THEM, IF THEY BE THERE IN
GOD'S NAME."—Stay, here follows some poetry—
"DARK SHALL BE LIGHT, AND WRONG DONE TO RIGHT, WHEN BERTRAM'S RIGHT AND BERTRAM'S MIGHT SHALL MEET ON ELLANGOWAN'S HEIGHT."
A most mystic epistle truly, and closes in a vein of poetry worthy of the Cumaean sibyl. And what have you done?'
'Why,' said Mannering, rather reluctantly, 'I was loth to risk any opportunity of throwing light on this business. The woman is perhaps crazed, and these effusions may arise only from visions of her imagination; but you were of opinion that she knew more of that strange story than she ever told.'
'And so,' said Pleydell, 'you sent a carriage to the place named?'
'You will laugh at me if I own I did,' replied the Colonel.
'Who, I?' replied the Advocate. 'No, truly, I think it was the wisest thing you could do.'
'Yes,' answered Mannering, well pleased to have escaped the ridicule he apprehended; 'you know the worst is paying the chaise-hire. I sent a post-chaise and four from Kippletringan, with instructions corresponding to the letter; the horses will have a long and cold station on the outpost to-night if our intelligence be false.'
'Ay, but I think it will prove otherwise,' said the Lawyer. 'This woman has played a part till she believes it; or, if she be a thorough-paced impostor, without a single grain of self-delusion to qualify her knavery, still she may think herself bound to act in character; this I know, that I could get nothing out of her by the common modes of interrogation, and the wisest thing we can do is to give her an opportunity of making the discovery her own way. And now have you more to say, or shall we go to the ladies?'
'Why, my mind is uncommonly agitated,' answered the Colonel, 'and—but I really have no more to say; only I shall count the minutes till the carriage returns; but you cannot be expected to be so anxious.'
'Why, no; use is all in all,' said the more experienced lawyer; 'I am much interested certainly, but I think I shall be able to survive the interval, if the ladies will afford us some music.'
'And with the assistance of the wild ducks, by and by?' suggested
Mannering.
'True, Colonel; a lawyer's anxiety about the fate of the most interesting cause has seldom spoiled either his sleep or digestion. [Footnote: See Note 6.] And yet I shall be very eager to hear the rattle of these wheels on their return, notwithstanding.'
So saying, he rose and led the way into the next room, where Miss Mannering, at his request, took her seat at the harpsichord, Lucy Bertram, who sung her native melodies very sweetly, was accompanied by her friend upon the instrument, and Julia afterwards performed some of Scarlatti's sonatas with great brilliancy. The old lawyer, scraping a little upon the violoncello, and being a member of the gentlemen's concert in Edinburgh, was so greatly delighted with this mode of spending the evening that I doubt if he once thought of the wild ducks until Barnes informed the company that supper was ready.
'Tell Mrs. Allan to have something in readiness,' said the Colonel; 'I expect—that is, I hope—perhaps some company may be here to-night; and let the men sit up, and do not lock the upper gate on the lawn until I desire you.'
'Lord, sir,' said Julia, 'whom can you possibly expect to-night?'
'Why, some persons, strangers to me, talked of calling in the evening on business,' answered her father, not without embarrassment, for he would have little brooked a disappointment which might have thrown ridicule on his judgment; 'it is quite uncertain.'
'Well, we shall not pardon them for disturbing our party,' said Julia, 'unless they bring as much good-humour and as susceptible hearts as my friend and admirer, for so he has dubbed himself, Mr. Pleydell.'
'Ah, Miss Julia,' said Pleydell, offering his arm with an air of gallantry to conduct her into the eating-room, 'the time has been, when I returned from Utrecht in the year 1738—'
'Pray don't talk of it,' answered the young lady; 'we like you much better as you are. Utrecht, in Heaven's name! I daresay you have spent all the intervening years in getting rid so completely of the effects of your Dutch education.'
'O forgive me, Miss Mannering,' said the Lawyer, 'the Dutch are a much more accomplished people in point of gallantry than their volatile neighbours are willing to admit. They are constant as clock-work in their attentions.'
'I should tire of that,' said Julia.