Guy Mannering, Or, the Astrologer — Complete, Walter Scott [best book club books txt] 📗

'Umph!' answered Dirk Hatteraick.

'Not,' continued Glossin—'not that I would wish any personal harm to him—if—if—if we can do without. Now, he is liable to be seized upon by justice, both as bearing the same name with your lieutenant, who was engaged in that affair at Woodbourne, and for firing at young Hazlewood with intent to kill or wound.'

'Ay, ay,' said Dirk Hatteraick; 'but what good will that do you? He'll be loose again as soon as he shows himself to carry other colours.'

'True, my dear Dirk; well noticed, my friend Hatteraick! But there is ground enough for a temporary imprisonment till he fetch his proofs from England or elsewhere, my good friend. I understand the law, Captain Hatteraick, and I'll take it upon me, simple Gilbert Glossin of Ellangowan, justice of peace for the county of—-, to refuse his bail, if he should offer the best in the country, until he is brought up for a second examination; now where d'ye think I'll incarcerate him?'

'Hagel and wetter! what do I care?'

'Stay, my friend; you do care a great deal. Do you know your goods that were seized and carried to Woodbourne are now lying in the custom-house at Portanferry? (a small fishing-town). Now I will commit this younker—'

'When you have caught him.'

'Ay, ay, when I have caught him; I shall not be long about that. I will commit him to the workhouse, or bridewell, which you know is beside the custom-house.'

'Yaw, the rasp-house; I know it very well.'

'I will take care that the redcoats are dispersed through the country; you land at night with the crew of your lugger, receive your own goods, and carry the younker Brown with you back to Flushing. Won't that do?'

'Ay, carry him to Flushing,' said the Captain, 'or—to America?'

'Ay, ay, my friend.'

'Or—to Jericho?'

'Psha! Wherever you have a mind.'

'Ay, or—pitch him overboard?'

'Nay, I advise no violence.'

'Nein, nein; you leave that to me. Sturmwetter! I know you of old. But, hark ye, what am I, Dirk Hatteraick, to be the better of this?'

'Why, is it not your interest as well as mine?' said Glossin; 'besides,
I set you free this morning.'

'YOU set me free! Donner and deyvil! I set myself free. Besides, it was all in the way of your profession, and happened a long time ago, ha, ha, ha!'

'Pshaw! pshaw! don't let us jest; I am not against making a handsome compliment; but it's your affair as well as mine.'

'What do you talk of my affair? is it not you that keep the younker's whole estate from him? Dirk Hatteraick never touched a stiver of his rents.'

'Hush! hush! I tell you it shall be a joint business.'

'Why, will ye give me half the kitt?'

'What, half the estate? D'ye mean we should set up house together at
Ellangowan, and take the barony ridge about?'

'Sturmwetter, no! but you might give me half the value—half the gelt.
Live with you? nein. I would have a lusthaus of mine own on the
Middleburgh dyke, and a blumengarten like a burgomaster's.'

'Ay, and a wooden lion at the door, and a painted sentinel in the garden, with a pipe in his mouth! But, hark ye, Hatteraick, what will all the tulips and flower-gardens and pleasure-houses in the Netherlands do for you if you are hanged here in Scotland?'

Hatteraick's countenance fell. 'Der deyvil! hanged!'

'Ay, hanged, mein Herr Captain. The devil can scarce save Dirk Hatteraick from being hanged for a murderer and kidnapper if the younker of Ellangowan should settle in this country, and if the gallant Captain chances to be caught here reestablishing his fair trade! And I won't say but, as peace is now so much talked of, their High Mightinesses may not hand him over to oblige their new allies, even if he remained in faderland.'

'Poz hagel, blitzen, and donner! I—I doubt you say true.'

'Not,' said Glossin, perceiving he had made the desired impression, 'not that I am against being civil'; and he slid into Hatteraick's passive hand a bank-note of some value.

'Is this all?' said the smuggler. 'You had the price of half a cargo for winking at our job, and made us do your business too.'

' But, my good friend, you forget: In this case you will recover all your own goods.'

'Ay, at the risk of all our own necks; we could do that without you.'

'I doubt that, Captain Hatteraick,' said Glossin, drily;' because you would probably find a-'dozen'redcoats at the custom-house, whom it must be my business, if we agree about this matter, to have removed. Come, come, I will be as liberal as I can, but you should have a conscience.'

'Now strafe mich der deyfel! this provokes me more than all the rest! You rob and you murder, and you want me to rob and murder, and play the silver-cooper, or kidnapper, as you call it, a dozen times over, and then, hagel and windsturm! you speak to me of conscience! Can you think of no fairer way of getting rid of this unlucky lad?'

'No, mein Herr; but as I commit him to your charge-'

'To my charge! to the charge of steel and gunpowder! and—well, if it must be, it must; but you have a tolerably good guess what's like to come of it.'

'O, my dear friend, I trust no degree of severity will be necessary,' replied Glossin.

'Severity!' said the fellow, with a kind of groan, 'I wish you had had my dreams when I first came to this dog-hole, and tried to sleep among the dry seaweed. First, there was that d-d fellow there, with his broken back, sprawling as he did when I hurled the rock over a-top on him, ha, ha! You would have sworn he was lying on the floor where you stand, wriggling like a crushed frog, and then—'

'Nay, my friend,' said Glossin, interrupting him, 'what signifies going over this nonsense? If you are turned chicken-hearted, why, the game's up, that's all; the game's up with us both.'

'Chicken-hearted? no. I have not lived so long upon the account to start at last, neither for devil nor Dutchman.'

'Well, then, take another schnaps; the cold's at your heart still. And now tell me, are any of your old crew with you?'

'Nein; all dead, shot, hanged, drowned, and damned. Brown was the last. All dead but Gipsy Gab, and he would go off the country for a spill of money; or he'll be quiet for his own sake; or old Meg, his aunt, will keep him quiet for hers.'

'Which Meg?'

'Meg Merrilies, the old devil's limb of a gipsy witch.'

'Is she still alive?'

'Yaw.'

'And in this country?'

'And in this country. She was at the Kaim of Derncleugh, at Vanbeest Brown's last wake, as they call it, the other night, with two of my people, and some of her own blasted gipsies.'

'That's another breaker ahead, Captain! Will she not squeak, think ye?'

'Not she! she won't start; she swore by the salmon, [Footnote: The great and invoidable oath of the strolling tribes.] if we did the kinchin no harm, she would never tell how the gauger got it. Why, man, though I gave her a wipe with my hanger in the heat of the matter, and cut her arm, and though she was so long after in trouble about it up at your borough-town there, der deyvil! old Meg was as true as steel.'

'Why, that's true, as you say,' replied Glossin. 'And yet if she could be carried over to Zealand, or Hamburgh, or—or—anywhere else, you know, it were as well.'

Hatteraick jumped upright upon his feet, and looked at Glossin from head to heel. 'I don't see the goat's foot,' he said, 'and yet he must be the very deyvil! But Meg Merrilies is closer yet with the kobold than you are; ay, and I had never such weather as after having drawn her blood. Nein, nein, I 'll meddle with her no more; she's a witch of the fiend, a real deyvil's kind,—but that's her affair. Donner and wetter! I'll neither make nor meddle; that's her work. But for the rest—why, if I thought the trade would not suffer, I would soon rid you of the younker, if you send me word when he's under embargo.'

In brief and under tones the two worthy associates concerted their enterprise, and agreed at which of his haunts Hatteraick should be heard of. The stay of his lugger on the coast was not difficult, as there were no king's vessels there at the time.

You are one of those that will not serve God if the devil bids you. Because we come to do you service, you think we are ruffians.

—Othello.

When Glossin returned home he found, among other letters and papers sent to him, one of considerable importance. It was signed by Mr. Protocol, an attorney in Edinburgh, and, addressing him as the agent for Godfrey Bertram, Esq., late of Ellangowan, and his representatives, acquainted him with the sudden death of Mrs. Margaret Bertram of Singleside, requesting him to inform his clients thereof, in case they should judge it proper to have any person present for their interest at opening the repositories of the deceased. Mr. Glossin perceived at once that the letter-writer was unacquainted with the breach which had taken place between him and his late patron. The estate of the deceased lady should by rights, as he well knew, descend to Lucy Bertram; but it was a thousand to one that the caprice of the old lady might have altered its destination. After running over contingencies and probabilities in his fertile mind, to ascertain what sort of personal advantage might accrue to him from this incident, he could not perceive any mode of availing himself of it, except in so far as it might go to assist his plan of recovering, or rather creating, a character, the want of which he had already experienced, and was likely to feel yet more deeply. 'I must place myself,' he thought, 'on strong ground, that, if anything goes wrong with Dirk Hatteraick's project, I may have prepossessions in my favour at least.' Besides, to do Glossin justice, bad as he was, he might feel some desire to compensate to Miss Bertram in a small degree, and in a case in which his own interest did not interfere with hers, the infinite mischief which he had occasioned to her family. He therefore resolved early the next morning to ride over to Woodbourne.

It was not without hesitation that he took this step, having the natural reluctance to face Colonel Mannering which fraud and villainy have to encounter honour and probity. But he had great confidence in his own savoir faire. His talents were naturally acute, and by no means confined to the line of his profession. He had at different times resided a good deal in England, and his address was free both from country rusticity and professional pedantry; so that he had considerable powers both of address and persuasion, joined to an unshaken effrontery, which he affected to disguise under plainness of manner. Confident, therefore, in himself, he appeared at Woodbourne about ten in the morning, and was admitted as a gentleman come to wait upon Miss Bertram.

He did not announce himself until he was at the door of the breakfast-parlour, when the servant, by his desire, said aloud—'Mr. Glossin, to wait upon Miss Bertram.' Lucy, remembering the last scene of her father's existence, turned as pale as death, and had well-nigh fallen from her chair. Julia Mannering flew to her assistance, and they left the room together. There remained Colonel Mannering, Charles Hazlewood, with his arm in a sling, and the Dominie, whose gaunt visage and wall-eyes assumed a most hostile aspect on recognising Glossin.

That honest gentleman, though somewhat abashed by the effect of his first introduction, advanced with confidence, and hoped he did not intrude upon the ladies. Colonel Mannering, in a very upright and stately manner, observed, that he did not know to what he was to impute the honour of a visit from Mr. Glossin.

'Hem! hem! I took the liberty to wait upon Miss Bertram, Colonel
Mannering, on account of a matter of business.'

'If it can be communicated to Mr. Mac-Morlan, her agent, sir, I believe it will be more agreeable to Miss Bertram.'