Guy Mannering, Or, the Astrologer — Complete by Walter Scott (best novels to read for students TXT) 📖

bewitched, the bairn should have the same luck as him; and the minister followed as fast as he could, and almaist as fast as them, for he was wonderfully swift of foot, and he saw Meg the witch, or her master in her similitude, rise suddenly out of the ground, and claught the bairn suddenly out of the ganger's arms; and then he rampauged and drew his sword, for ye ken a fie man and a cusser fearsna the deil.'

'I believe that's very true,' said the postilion.

'So, sir, she grippit him, and clodded him like a stane from the sling ower the craigs of Warroch Head, where he was found that evening; but what became of the babe, frankly I cannot say. But he that was minister here then, that's now in a better place, had an opinion that the bairn was only conveyed to fairy-land for a season.'

The stranger had smiled slightly at some parts of this recital, but ere he could answer the clatter of a horse's hoofs was heard, and a smart servant, handsomely dressed, with a cockade in his hat, bustled into the kitchen, with 'Make a little room, good people'; when, observing the stranger, he descended at once into the modest and civil domestic, his hat sunk down by his side, and he put a letter into his master's hands. 'The family at Ellangowan, sir, are in great distress, and unable to receive any visits.'

'I know it,' replied his master. 'And now, madam, if you will have the goodness to allow me to occupy the parlour you mentioned, as you are disappointed of your guests—'

'Certainly, sir,' said Mrs. Mac-Candlish, and hastened to light the way with all the imperative bustle which an active landlady loves to display on such occasions.

'Young man,' said the Deacon to the servant, filling a glass, 'ye'll no be the waur o' this, after your ride.'

'Not a feather, sir; thank ye, your very good health, sir.'

'And wha may your master be, friend?'

'What, the gentleman that was here? that's the famous Colonel
Mannering, sir, from the East Indies.'

'What, him we read of in the newspapers?'

'Ay, ay, just the same. It was he relieved Cuddieburn, and defended
Chingalore, and defeated the great Mahratta chief, Ram Jolli Bundleman.
I was with him in most of his campaigns.'

'Lord safe us,' said the landlady; 'I must go see what he would have for supper; that I should set him down here!'

'O, he likes that all the better, mother. You never saw a plainer creature in your life than our old Colonel; and yet he has a spice of the devil in him too.'

The rest of the evening's conversation below stairs tending little to edification, we shall, with the reader's leave, step up to the parlour.

CHAPTER XII

     Reputation! that's man's idol
     Set up against God, the Maker of all laws,
     Who hath commanded us we should not kill,
     And yet we say we must, for Reputation!
     What honest man can either fear his own,
     Or else will hurt another's reputation?
     Fear to do base unworthy things is valour;
     If they be done to us, to suffer them
     Is valour too.

BEN JONSON.

The Colonel was walking pensively up and down the parlour when the officious landlady reentered to take his commands. Having given them in the manner he thought would be most acceptable 'for the good of the house,' be begged to detain her a moment.

'I think,' he said, 'madam, if I understood the good people right, Mr.
Bertram lost his son in his fifth year?'

'O ay, sir, there's nae doubt o' that, though there are mony idle clashes about the way and manner, for it's an auld story now, and everybody tells it, as we were doing, their ain way by the ingleside. But lost the bairn was in his fifth year, as your honour says, Colonel; and the news being rashly tell'd to the leddy, then great with child, cost her her life that samyn night; and the Laird never throve after that day, but was just careless of everything, though, when his daughter Miss Lucy grew up, she tried to keep order within doors; but what could she do, poor thing? So now they're out of house and hauld.'

'Can you recollect, madam, about what time of the year the child was lost?' The landlady, after a pause and some recollection, answered, 'she was positive it was about this season'; and added some local recollections that fixed the date in her memory as occurring about the beginning of November 17—.

The stranger took two or three turns round the room in silence, but signed to Mrs. Mac-Candlish not to leave it.

'Did I rightly apprehend,' he said, 'that the estate of Ellangowan is in the market?'

'In the market? It will be sell'd the morn to the highest bidder—that's no the morn, Lord help me! which is the Sabbath, but on Monday, the first free day; and the furniture and stocking is to be roupit at the same time on the ground. It's the opinion of the haill country that the sale has been shamefully forced on at this time, when there's sae little money stirring in Scotland wi' this weary American war, that somebody may get the land a bargain. Deil be in them, that I should say sae!'—the good lady's wrath rising at the supposed injustice.

'And where will the sale take place?'

'On the premises, as the advertisement says; that's at the house of
Ellangowan, your honour, as I understand it.'

'And who exhibits the title-deeds, rent-roll, and plan?'

'A very decent man, sir; the sheriff-substitute of the county, who has authority from the Court of Session. He's in the town just now, if your honour would like to see him; and he can tell you mair about the loss of the bairn than ony body, for the sheriff-depute (that's his principal, like) took much pains to come at the truth o' that matter, as I have heard.'

'And this gentleman's name is—'

'Mac-Morlan, sir; he's a man o' character, and weel spoken o'.'

'Send my compliments—Colonel Mannering's compliments to him, and I would be glad he would do me the pleasure of supping with me, and bring these papers with him; and I beg, good madam, you will say nothing of this to any one else.'

'Me, sir? ne'er a word shall I say. I wish your honour (a courtesy), or ony honourable gentleman that's fought for his country (another courtesy), had the land, since the auld family maun quit (a sigh), rather than that wily scoundrel Glossin, that's risen on the ruin of the best friend he ever had. And now I think on't, I'll slip on my hood and pattens, and gang to Mr. Mac-Morlan mysell, he's at hame e'en now; it's hardly a step.'

'Do so, my good landlady, and many thanks; and bid my servant step here with my portfolio in the meantime.'

In a minute or two Colonel Mannering was quietly seated with his writing materials before him. We have the privilege of looking over his shoulder as he writes, and we willingly communicate its substance to our readers. The letter was addressed to Arthur Mervyn, Esq., of Mervyn Hall, Llanbraithwaite, Westmoreland. It contained some account of the writer's previous journey since parting with him, and then proceeded as follows:—

'And now, why will you still upbraid me with my melancholy, Mervyn? Do you think, after the lapse of twenty-five years, battles, wounds, imprisonment, misfortunes of every description, I can be still the same lively, unbroken Guy Mannering who climbed Skiddaw with you, or shot grouse upon Crossfell? That you, who have remained in the bosom of domestic happiness, experience little change, that your step is as light and your fancy as full of sunshine, is a blessed effect of health and temperament, cooperating with content and a smooth current down the course of life. But MY career has been one of difficulties and doubts and errors. From my infancy I have been the sport of accident, and, though the wind has often borne me into harbour, it has seldom been into that which the pilot destined. Let me recall to you—but the task must be brief—the odd and wayward fates of my youth, and the misfortunes of my manhood.

'The former, you will say, had nothing very appalling. All was not for the best; but all was tolerable. My father, the eldest son of an ancient but reduced family, left me with little, save the name of the head of the house, to the protection of his more fortunate brothers. They were so fond of me that they almost quarrelled about me. My uncle, the bishop, would have had me in orders, and offered me a living; my uncle, the merchant, would have put me into a counting-house, and proposed to give me a share in the thriving concern of Mannering and Marshall, in Lombard Street. So, between these two stools, or rather these two soft, easy, well-stuffed chairs of divinity and commerce, my unfortunate person slipped down, and pitched upon a dragoon saddle. Again, the bishop wished me to marry the niece and heiress of the Dean of Lincoln; and my uncle, the alderman, proposed to me the only daughter of old Sloethorn, the great wine-merchant, rich enough to play at span-counter with moidores and make thread-papers of bank-notes; and somehow I slipped my neck out of both nooses, and married—poor, poor Sophia Wellwood.

'You will say, my military career in India, when I followed my regiment there, should have given me some satisfaction; and so it assuredly has. You will remind me also, that if I disappointed the hopes of my guardians, I did not incur their displeasure; that the bishop, at his death, bequeathed me his blessing, his manuscript sermons, and a curious portfolio containing the heads of eminent divines of the church of England; and that my uncle, Sir Paul Mannering, left me sole heir and executor to his large fortune. Yet this availeth me nothing; I told you I had that upon my mind which I should carry to my grave with me, a perpetual aloes in the draught of existence. I will tell you the cause more in detail than I had the heart to do while under your hospitable roof. You will often hear it mentioned, and perhaps with different and unfounded circumstances. I will therefore speak it out; and then let the event itself, and the sentiments of melancholy with which it has impressed me, never again be subject of discussion between us.

'Sophia, as you well know, followed me to India. She was as innocent as gay; but, unfortunately for us both, as gay as innocent. My own manners were partly formed by studies I had forsaken, and habits of seclusion not quite consistent with my situation as commandant of a regiment in a country where universal hospitality is offered and expected by every settler claiming the rank of a gentleman. In a moment of peculiar pressure (you know how hard we were sometimes run to obtain white faces to countenance our line-of-battle), a young man named Brown joined our regiment as a volunteer, and, finding the military duty more to his fancy than commerce, in which he had been engaged, remained with us as a cadet. Let me do my unhappy victim justice: he behaved with such gallantry on every occasion that offered that the first vacant commission was considered as his due. I was absent for some weeks upon a distant expedition; when I returned I found this young fellow established quite as the friend of the house, and habitual attendant of my wife and daughter. It was an arrangement which displeased me in many particulars, though no objection could be made to his manners or character. Yet I might have been reconciled to his familiarity in my family, but for the suggestions of another. If you read over—what I never dare open—the play of "Othello," you will have some idea of what followed—I mean of my motives; my actions, thank God! were less reprehensible. There was another cadet ambitious of the vacant situation. He called my attention to what he led me to term coquetry between my wife and this young man. Sophia was virtuous, but proud of her virtue; and, irritated by my jealousy, she was so imprudent as to press and encourage an intimacy which she saw I disapproved and regarded with suspicion. Between Brown and me there existed a sort of internal dislike. He made an effort or two to overcome my prejudice; but, prepossessed as I was, I placed them to a wrong motive. Feeling himself repulsed, and with scorn, he desisted; and as