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

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.

'Imperturbable in their good temper,' continued Pleydell.

'Worse and worse,' said the young lady.

'And then,' said the old beau garcon, 'although for six times three hundred and sixty-five days your swain has placed the capuchin round your neck, and the stove under your feet, and driven your little sledge upon the ice in winter, and your cabriole through the dust in summer, you may dismiss him at once, without reason or apology, upon the two thousand one hundred and ninetieth day, which, according to my hasty calculation, and without reckoning leap-years, will complete the cycle of the supposed adoration, and that without your amiable feelings having the slightest occasion to be alarmed for the consequences to those of Mynheer.'

'Well,' replied Julia,' that last is truly a Dutch recommendation, Mr. Pleydell; crystal and hearts would lose all their merit in the world if it were not for their fragility.'

'Why,