Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer — Complete, Walter Scott [rainbow fish read aloud .txt] 📗

choose to leave it. Before this interview he had dressed himself, Barnes having, by his master’s orders, supplied him with every accommodation of linen, etc., and now anxiously waited the promised visit of his landlord.

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

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

‘Yes, the stranger, you know, that came last evening, in the post vehicle; he who shot young Hazelwood, ha, ha, ha!’ burst forth the Dominie, with a laugh that sounded like neighing.

‘Indeed, Mr. Sampson,’ said his pupil, ‘you have chosen a strange subject for mirth; I think nothing about the man, only I hope the outrage 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 unusually gay 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 I would wish rather to know the meaning of your mirth than to be amused with its effects only.’

‘You shall know it, Miss Lucy,’ replied poor Abel. ‘Do you remember your brother?’

‘Good God, how can you ask me? No one knows better than you he was lost the very day I was born.’

‘Very true, very true,’ answered the Dominie, saddening at the recollection; ‘I was strangely oblivious; ay, ay! too true. But you remember 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 laugh sinking into a hysterical giggle. ‘I will be facetious no more under these remembrances; but look at that young man!’

Bertram at this instant entered the room. ‘Yes, look at him well, he is your father’s living image; and as God has deprived you of your dear parents--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 upon her face (which in his haste he took from the boiling tea-urn), when fortunately her colour, returning rapidly, saved her from the application of this ill-judged remedy. ‘I conjure you to tell me, Mr. Sampson,’ she said, in an interrupted yet solemn voice, ‘is this my brother?’

‘It is, it is! Miss Lucy, it is little Harry Bertram, as sure as God’s sun is in that heaven!’

‘And this is my sister?’ said Bertram, giving way to all that family affection which had so long slumbered in his bosom for want of an object to expand itself upon.

‘It is, it is!--it is Miss Lucy Bertram,’ ejaculated Sampson, ‘whom by my 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 in arithmetic and book-keeping by double and single entry. I say nothing of her talents of shaping and hemming and governing a household, which, to give every one their due, she acquired not from me but from the housekeeper; nor do I take merit for her performance upon stringed instruments, whereunto the instructions of an honourable young lady of virtue and modesty, and very facetious withal--Miss Julia Mannering--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 an account of our family misfortunes, though without saying I should find my sister here.’

‘That,’ said Lucy, ‘he left to this gentleman to tell you--one of the kindest and most faithful of friends, who soothed my father’s long sickness, witnessed his dying moments, and amid the heaviest clouds of fortune would not desert his orphan.’

‘God bless him for it!’ said Bertram, shaking the Dominie’s hand;’ he deserves the love with which I have always regarded even that dim and imperfect shadow of his memory which my childhood retained.’

‘And God bless you both, my dear children!’ said Sampson; ‘if it had not been for your sake I would have been contented--had Heaven’s pleasure 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 see better days. All our wrongs shall be redressed, since Heaven has sent me means and friends to assert my right.’

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

The reader may observe that upon this occasion Sampson was infinitely more profuse of words than he had hitherto exhibited himself. The reason was that, in recovering his pupil, his mind went instantly back to their original connexion, and he had, in his confusion of ideas, the strongest desire in the world to resume spelling lessons and half-text with young Bertram. This was the more ridiculous, as towards Lucy he assumed no such