Guy Mannering, Or, the Astrologer — Complete

  CHAPTER LI

  My imagination Carries no favour in it but Bertram's; I am undone, there is no living, none, If Bertram be away. --All's Well that Ends Well.

  At the hour which he had appointed the preceding evening theindefatigable lawyer was seated by a good fire and a pair of waxcandles, with a velvet cap on his head and a quilted silk nightgown onhis person, busy arranging his memoranda of proofs and indicationsconcerning the murder of Frank Kennedy. An express had also beendespatched to Mr. Mac-Morlan, requesting his attendance at Woodbourneas soon as possible on business of importance. Dinmont, fatigued withthe events of the evening before, and finding the accommodations ofWoodbourne much preferable to those of Mac-Guffog, was in no hurry torise. The impatience of Bertram might have put him earlier in motion,but Colonel Mannering had intimated an intention to visit him in hisapartment in the morning, and he did not choose to leave it. Beforethis interview he had dressed himself, Barnes having, by his master'sorders, supplied him with every accommodation of linen, etc., and nowanxiously waited the promised visit of his landlord.

  In a short time a gentle tap announced the Colonel, with whom Bertramheld a long and satisfactory conversation. Each, however, concealedfrom the other one circumstance. Mannering could not bring himself toacknowledge the astrological prediction; and Bertram was, from motiveswhich may be easily conceived, silent respecting his love for Julia. Inother respects their intercourse was frank and grateful to both, andhad latterly, upon the Colonel's part, even an approach to cordiality.Bertram carefully measured his own conduct by that of his host, andseemed rather to receive his offered kindness with gratitude andpleasure than to press for it with solicitation.

  Miss Bertram was in the breakfast-parlour when Sampson shuffled in, hisface all radiant with smiles--a circumstance so uncommon that Lucy'sfirst idea was that somebody had been bantering him with an imposition,which had thrown him into this ecstasy. Having sate for some timerolling his eyes and gaping with his mouth like the great wooden headat Merlin's exhibition, he at length began--'And what do you think ofhim, Miss Lucy?'

  'Think of whom, Mr. Sampson?' asked the young lady.

  'Of Har--no--of him that you know about?' again demanded the Dominie.

  'That I know about?' replied Lucy, totally at a loss to comprehend hismeaning.

  'Yes, the stranger, you know, that came last evening, in the postvehicle; he who shot young Hazelwood, ha, ha, ha!' burst forth theDominie, with a laugh that sounded like neighing.

  'Indeed, Mr. Sampson,' said his pupil, 'you have chosen a strangesubject for mirth; I think nothing about the man, only I hope theoutrage was accidental, and that we need not fear a repetition of it.'

  'Accidental! ha, ha, ha!' again whinnied Sampson.

  'Really, Mr. Sampson,' said Lucy, somewhat piqued, 'you are unusuallygay this morning.'

  'Yes, of a surety I am! ha, ha, ho! face-ti-ous, ho, ho, ha!'

  'So unusually facetious, my dear sir,' pursued the young lady, 'that Iwould wish rather to know the meaning of your mirth than to be amusedwith its effects only.'

  'You shall know it, Miss Lucy,' replied poor Abel. 'Do you rememberyour brother?'

  'Good God, how can you ask me? No one knows better than you he was lostthe very day I was born.'

  'Very true, very true,' answered the Dominie, saddening at therecollection; 'I was strangely oblivious; ay, ay! too true. But youremember your worthy father?'

  'How should you doubt it, Mr. Sampson? it is not so many weeks since--'

  'True, true; ay, too true,' replied the Dominie, his Houyhnhnm laughsinking into a hysterical giggle. 'I will be facetious no more underthese remembrances; but look at that young man!'

  Bertram at this instant entered the room. 'Yes, look at him well, he isyour father's living image; and as God has deprived you of your dearparents--O, my children, love one another!'

  'It is indeed my father's face and form,' said Lucy, turning very pale.Bertram ran to support her, the Dominie to fetch water to throw uponher face (which in his haste he took from the boiling tea-urn), whenfortunately her colour, returning rapidly, saved her from theapplication of this ill-judged remedy. 'I conjure you to tell me, Mr.Sampson,' she said, in an interrupted yet solemn voice, 'is this mybrother?'

  'It is, it is! Miss Lucy, it is little Harry Bertram, as sure as God'ssun is in that heaven!'

  'And this is my sister?' said Bertram, giving way to all that familyaffection which had so long slumbered in his bosom for want of anobject to expand itself upon.

  'It is, it is!--it is Miss Lucy Bertram,' ejaculated Sampson, 'whom bymy poor aid you will find perfect in the tongues of France and Italy,and even of Spain, in reading and writing her vernacular tongue, and inarithmetic and book-keeping by double and single entry. I say nothingof her talents of shaping and hemming and governing a household, which,to give every one their due, she acquired not from me but from thehousekeeper; nor do I take merit for her performance upon stringedinstruments, whereunto the instructions of an honourable young lady ofvirtue and modesty, and very facetious withal--Miss JuliaMannering--hath not meanly contributed. Suum cuique tribuito.'

  'You, then,' said Bertram to his sister, 'are all that remains to me!Last night, but more fully this morning, Colonel Mannering gave me anaccount of our family misfortunes, though without saying I should findmy sister here.'

  'That,' said Lucy, 'he left to this gentleman to tell you--one of thekindest and most faithful of friends, who soothed my father's longsickness, witnessed his dying moments, and amid the heaviest clouds offortune would not desert his orphan.'

  'God bless him for it!' said Bertram, shaking the Dominie's hand;' hedeserves the love with which I have always regarded even that dim andimperfect shadow of his memory which my childhood retained.'

  'And God bless you both, my dear children!' said Sampson; 'if it hadnot been for your sake I would have been contented--had Heaven'spleasure so been--to lay my head upon the turf beside my patron.'

  'But I trust,' said Bertram--'I am encouraged to hope, we shall all seebetter days. All our wrongs shall be redressed, since Heaven has sentme means and friends to assert my right.'

  'Friends indeed!' echoed the Dominie, 'and sent, as you truly say, byHIM to whom I early taught you to look up as the source of all that isgood. There is the great Colonel Mannering from the Eastern Indies, aman of war from his birth upwards, but who is not the less a man ofgreat erudition, considering his imperfect opportunities; and there is,moreover, the great advocate Mr. Pleydell, who is also a man of greaterudition, but who descendeth to trifles unbeseeming thereof; and thereis Mr. Andrew Dinmont, whom I do not understand to have possession ofmuch erudition, but who, like the patriarchs of old, is cunning in thatwhich belongeth to flocks and herds; lastly, there is even I myself,whose opportunities of collecting erudition, as they have been greaterthan those of the aforesaid valuable persons, have not, if it becomesme to speak, been pretermitted by me, in so far as my poor facultieshave enabled me to profit by them. Of a surety, little Harry, we mustspeedily resume our studies. I will begin from the foundation. Yes, Iwill reform your education upward from the true knowledge of Englishgrammar even to that of the Hebrew or Chaldaic tongue.'

  The reader may observe that upon this occasion Sampson was infinitelymore profuse of words than he had hitherto exhibited himself. Thereason was that, in recovering his pupil, his mind went instantly backto their original connexion, and he had, in his confusion of ideas, thestrongest desire in the world to resume spelling lessons and half-textwith young Bertram. This was the more ridiculous, as towards Lucy heassumed no such powers of tuition. But she had grown up under his eye,and had been gradually emancipated from his government by increase inyears and knowledge, and a latent sense of his own inferior tact inmanners, whereas his first ideas went to take up Harry pretty nearlywhere he had left him. From the same feelings of reviving authority heindulged himself in what was to him a profusion of language; and aspeop
le seldom speak more than usual without exposing themselves, hegave those whom he addressed plainly to understand that, while hedeferred implicitly to the opinions and commands, if they chose toimpose them, of almost every one whom he met with, it was under aninternal conviction that in the article of eru-di-ti-on, as he usuallypronounced the word, he was infinitely superior to them all puttogether. At present, however, this intimation fell upon heedless ears,for the brother and sister were too deeply engaged in asking andreceiving intelligence concerning their former fortunes to attend muchto the worthy Dominie. When Colonel Mannering left Bertram he went toJulia's dressing-room and dismissed her attendant. 'My dear sir,' shesaid as he entered, 'you have forgot our vigils last night, and havehardly allowed me time to comb my hair, although you must be sensiblehow it stood on end at the various wonders which took place.'

  'It is with the inside of your head that I have some business atpresent, Julia; I will return the outside to the care of your Mrs.Mincing in a few minutes.'

  'Lord, papa,' replied Miss Mannering, 'think how entangled all my ideasare, and you to propose to comb them out in a few minutes! If Mincingwere to do so in her department she would tear half the hair out of myhead.'

  'Well then, tell me,' said the Colonel, 'where the entanglement lies,which I will try to extricate with due gentleness?'

  'O, everywhere,' said the young lady; 'the whole is a wild dream.'

  'Well then, I will try to unriddle it.' He gave a brief sketch of thefate and prospects of Bertram, to which Julia listened with an interestwhich she in vain endeavoured to disguise. 'Well,' concluded herfather, 'are your ideas on the subject more luminous?'

  'More confused than ever, my dear sir,' said Julia. 'Here is this youngman come from India, after he had been supposed dead, like Aboulfouaristhe great voyager to his sister Canzade and his provident brother Hour.I am wrong in the story, I believe--Canzade was his wife; but Lucy mayrepresent the one and the Dominie the other. And then this livelycrack-brained Scotch lawyer appears like a pantomime at the end of atragedy. And then how delightful it will be if Lucy gets back herfortune.'

  'Now I think,' said the Colonel, 'that the most mysterious part of thebusiness is, that Miss Julia Mannering, who must have known herfather's anxiety about the fate of this young man Brown, or Bertram, aswe must now call him, should have met him when Hazlewood's accidenttook place, and never once mentioned to her father a word of thematter, but suffered the search to proceed against this young gentlemanas a suspicious character and assassin.'

  Julia, much of whose courage had been hastily assumed to meet theinterview with her father, was now unable to rally herself; she hungdown her head in silence, after in vain attempting to utter a denialthat she recollected Brown when she met him.

  'No answer! Well, Julia,' continued her father, gravely but kindly,'allow me to ask you, Is this the only time you have seen Brown sincehis return from India? Still no answer. I must then naturally supposethat it is not the first time. Still no reply. Julia Mannering, willyou have the kindness to answer me? Was it this young man who cameunder your window and conversed with you during your residence atMervyn Hall? Julia, I command--I entreat you to be candid.'

  Miss Mannering raised her head. 'I have been, sir--I believe I amstill--very foolish; and it is perhaps more hard upon me that I mustmeet this gentleman, who has been, though not the cause entirely, yetthe accomplice, of my folly, in your presence.' Here she made a fullstop.

  'I am to understand, then,' said Mannering, 'that this was the authorof the serenade at Mervyn Hall?'

  There was something in this allusive change of epithet that gave Juliaa little more courage. 'He was indeed, sir; and if I am very wrong, asI have often thought, I have some apology.'

  'And what is that?' answered the Colonel, speaking quick, and withsomething of harshness.

  'I will not venture to name it, sir; but (she opened a small cabinet,and put some letters into his hands) I will give you these, that youmay see how this intimacy began, and by whom it was encouraged.'

  Mannering took the packet to the window--his pride forbade a moredistant retreat. He glanced at some passages of the letters with anunsteady eye and an agitated mind; his stoicism, however, came in timeto his aid--that philosophy which, rooted in pride, yet frequentlybears the fruits of virtue. He returned towards his daughter with asfirm an air as his feelings permitted him to assume.

  'There is great apology for you, Julia, as far as I can judge from aglance at these letters; you have obeyed at least one parent. Let usadopt a Scotch proverb the Dominie quoted the other day--"Let bygonesbe bygones, and fair play for the future." I will never upbraid youwith your past want of confidence; do you judge of my future intentionsby my actions, of which hitherto you have surely had no reason tocomplain. Keep these letters; they were never intended for my eye, andI would not willingly read more of them than I have done, at yourdesire and for your exculpation. And now, are we friends? Or rather, doyou understand me?'

  'O, my dear, generous father,' said Julia, throwing herself into hisarms, 'why have I ever for an instant misunderstood you?'

  'No more of that, Julia,' said the Colonel; 'we have both been toblame. He that is too proud to vindicate the affection and confidencewhich he conceives should be given without solicitation, must meetmuch, and perhaps deserved, disappointment. It is enough that onedearest and most regretted member of my family has gone to the gravewithout knowing me; let me not lose the confidence of a child who oughtto love me if she really loves herself.'

  'O, no danger, no fear!' answered Julia; 'let me but have yourapprobation and my own, and there is no rule you can prescribe sosevere that I will not follow.'

  'Well, my love,' kissing her forehead, 'I trust we shall not call uponyou for anything too heroic. With respect to this young gentleman'saddresses, I expect in the first place that all clandestinecorrespondence, which no young woman can entertain for a moment withoutlessening herself in her own eyes and in those of her lover--I request,I say, that clandestine correspondence of every kind may be given up,and that you will refer Mr. Bertram to me for the reason. You willnaturally wish to know what is to be the issue of such a reference. Inthe first place, I desire to observe this young gentleman's charactermore closely than circumstances, and perhaps my own prejudices, havepermitted formerly. I should also be glad to see his birth established.Not that I am anxious about his getting the estate of Ellangowan,though such a subject is held in absolute indifference nowhere exceptin a novel; but certainly Henry Bertram, heir of Ellangowan, whetherpossessed of the property of his ancestors or not, is a very differentperson from Vanbeest Brown, the son of nobody at all. His fathers, Mr.Pleydell tells me, are distinguished in history as following thebanners of their native princes, while our own fought at Cressy andPoirtiers. In short, I neither give nor withhold my approbation, but Iexpect you will redeem past errors; and, as you can now unfortunatelyonly have recourse to ONE parent, that you will show the duty of achild by reposing that confidence in me which I will say my inclinationto make you happy renders a filial debt upon your part.'

  The first part of this speech affected Julia a good deal, thecomparative merit of the ancestors of the Bertrams and Manneringsexcited a secret smile, but the conclusion was such as to soften aheart peculiarly open to the feelings of generosity. 'No, my dear sir,'she said, extending her hand,' receive my faith, that from this momentyou shall be the first person consulted respecting what shall pass infuture between Brown--I mean Bertram--and me; and that no engagementshall be undertaken by me excepting what you shall immediately know andapprove of. May I ask if Mr. Bertram is to continue a guest atWoodbourne?'

  'Certainly,' said the Colonel, 'while his affairs render it advisable.'

  'Then, sir, you must be sensible, considering what is already past,that he will expect some reason for my withdrawing, I believe I mustsay the encouragement, which he may think I have given.'

  'I expect, Julia,' answered Mannering, 'that he will respect my roof,and entertain some sense pe
rhaps of the services I am desirous torender him, and so will not insist upon any course of conduct of whichI might have reason to complain; and I expect of you that you will makehim sensible of what is due to both.'

  'Then, sir, I understand you, and you shall be implicitly obeyed.'

  'Thank you, my love; my anxiety (kissing her) is on your account. Nowwipe these witnesses from your eyes, and so to breakfast.'