The ordinary and too well-deserved lamentation over the fragility of
human resolutions was not in general applicable to the determinations
of Charles Manners, who was usually very rigid in his adherence to his
purposes, whether they were of great or small importance. But it must
not be supposed that this pertinacity, if it may so be called, in
pursuit of designs he had already formed, proceeded from what the
world calls obstinacy. Obstinacy maybe defined the act of persisting
in error; and the rectitude and precision of his judgment generally
kept him from being in error at first, so that he had rarely a
legitimate cause for breaking his resolution. Nor was he either of
such a hard and tenacious nature as to resist all persuasion, and,
like the cement of the Romans, only to grow the stiffer by the action
of external things. Far from it; he was always very willing to
sacrifice his purposes--where no moral sacrifice was implied--to the
wishes and solicitations of those he loved or esteemed. Nor is there
any contradiction in this statement, though it may be inquired, how,
then, did he break his resolutions less frequently than other people?
The secret was this, and it is worth while to burden memory with it:
he never formed his resolutions without thought, which saved at least
one-third from fracture; and though he broke them sometimes at the
entreaty of others, he never sacrificed them to any whim of his own,
which saved _very nearly_ two-thirds more; for we may depend upon it
that the determinations which we abandon, either from a change of
circumstances, or from the persuasions of our friends, form but a very
minute fraction, when compared with those that we give up, either from
original error or after caprice.
It has seemed necessary to give this lecture upon resolutions, because
Colonel Manners very speedily found cause to abandon the determination
which he formed so vigorously on the day we spoke of in the last
chapter; and, that he might not be charged with inconsistency, it
became requisite to enter into all those strict definitions and
explanations that generally leave us as many loopholes for escape and
evasion, as a treaty of peace or a deed of settlement.
One resolution, however, and one promise, Colonel Manners certainly
did keep, as soon as it was possible, which was, to inquire whether
the gipsies were still in the neighbourhood, and to seek them out,
with the full purpose of having his fortune told. Now, it may be
supposed that here was a little weakness on the part of Colonel
Manners--that he did give some credit to gipsy chiromancy; nay, the
reader may even push his conjectures farther, and imagine him dreaming
of Isadore Falkland's beautiful eyes, and all their varieties of
expression, from the deep and soft to the gayest sparkle that ever
twinkled through two rows of long silky eyelashes. But the simple fact
was, that he had promised to go, and that he went; and though he might
think Miss Falkland extremely beautiful and extremely pleasing, as
every man who had been two minutes in her company must have thought,
he no more dreamed of the possibility of so fair a creature, courted
and loved as he knew she must be, ever uniting herself to so ugly a
man as himself--and as he sat and shaved himself that morning he
thought himself uglier than ever--than Napoleon Bonaparte, in the
plenitude of power and the majesty of victory, thought of a low grave
beneath a willow on a rock in the Atlantic.
In regard to any belief in the gipsies' fortune-telling, there were
little use of investigating closely, whether some thin fibre of the
root of superstition had or had not been left in the bosom of Charles
Manners. If any particle thereof did remain, it went no farther than
to excite, perhaps, a slight degree of curiosity in regard to what the
people would predict, more, perhaps, from feeling that it must be
absurd, than from expecting any point of coincidence with his real
fate; and certain it is that, whatever the gipsies might have told to
Colonel Manners, he would have thought no more of after the immediate
moment, except as a matter for jest, than he would of any other kind
of _sortes_, whether drawn from Virgil or Joe Miller.
It was just a quarter to six on the morning after that which had seen
the walk in Morley Wood, when Manners, who was, as we have said, an
early riser, gave some orders to his servant concerning his horses,
and went out into the new wakened world. Having observed on the
preceding day, for the purpose of carrying on the jest, the exact
position of the hill on which Miss Falkland conjectured that the
gipsies might have quartered themselves, he took his way across the
park from that side which formed, in fact, the back of Morley House;
and, having assured himself beforehand that he could find means of
egress in that direction, he was soon beyond the walls, and winding up
a small cart-road towards the summit.
The hill itself was somewhat singular in form; and as it is rather
characteristic of that particular county, we may as well endeavour to
give the reader some idea of its appearance. It formed a portion of
that steep range of upland which we have before described as
principally covered with fine wood; but this particular point,
projecting towards the river in the form of very nearly a right angle,
seemed to have cast behind it the mass of forest which still continued
over the ridge of the other hills. Vestiges of the wood, too, hung in
broken patches on the flanks of even this protuberance, but the summit
offered nothing but a bare, open plain, full of pits and ravines, and
only further diversified by a few stunted hawthorns, and one single
group of tall beeches, gathered together upon a tumulus, which covered
the bodies of some of those invading warriors to whom our island was
once a prey. The ascent to this plain from the small gate in the park
wall, by which Colonel Manners issued forth, was in length somewhat
more than a mile; but it consisted of two distinct grades, or steps,
the first of which was formed by a little peninsula, jutting out from
the salient angle of the main hill, and completely surrounded by the
river on all sides except the one which served to unite it, by a
narrow neck not above three hundred yards in breadth, to the high
ground we have mentioned. This small peninsula, which was itself
covered with wood, rose in a rocky bank to the height of about a
hundred and fifty yards above the stream; and over the narrow isthmus
was carried the road which passed the park; while the wall of the park
itself, just excluding the wooded banks from the grounds of Morley
House, was lowered in that part, so as to leave a full view of the
picturesque little promontory from the windows of the mansion. Let the
reader remember all this, for his memory may be taxed hereafter.
Branching off from the right of the high-road lay the path up which
Colonel Manners took his way, and which passed over a track upon the
side of the hill, partly hedged in and cultivated, and partly left to
its own ungrateful sterility. It was steep also, but Manners was a
good climber; and, knowing that Mrs. Falkland's breakfast hour was
half-past nine, he did not linger by the way, but soon found himself
at the summit of the hill, and on the piece of waste ground which will
be found in the county map under the name of Morley Common, or Morley
Down. A good deal of dew had fallen in the night; and as the sun, who
had not yet pursued his bright course far up the arch of heaven,
poured the flood of his morning light upon the short blades of grass
covering the common, the whole would have seemed crisp with hoarfrost,
had not, every here and there, a tuft of longer leaves caught the rays
more fully, and twinkled as if sprinkled with living diamonds, as the
early air moved it gently in the beams. In different directions across
the common might be seen a hundred small foot-roads, winding in that
tortuous and unsteady manner which is sure to mark a path trodden out
by man's unguided feet, and which offers no bad comment on his
uncertain and roundabout way of arriving at his object; but, as the
ground comprised many hundred acres, Colonel Manners might have been
puzzled which way to take, had not his military habits at once sent
him to the small planted tumulus which we have mentioned, in order to
obtain a general view of the place.
Climbing up the sides of the little mound, therefore, he gazed round
him; but neither gipsies nor tents were visible; and he might have
returned to Mrs. Falkland's, satisfied that they were not there, had
not a small column of faint blue smoke, rising from behind some
bushes, at the distance of about a quarter of a mile, marked the
presence of human beings in that direction, and shown that the bushes,
though apparently not higher than a man's hat, masked some fall in the
ground where the fire was kindled. Thither, then, Manners turned his
steps, and soon perceived that another old sand-pit, with some bushes
climbing up one of the sides, had given shelter to those of whom he
was now in search.
Before he could even discover so much, he became aware, by two low
whistles, that his own approach had been perceived; and, as he was
advancing directly towards the sand-pit, where a number of the gipsies
had paused in their various occupations to watch him, he saw a man
issue forth from one of the huts, put something hastily into the bosom
of his long wrapping coat, and then come forward to meet him. The
gipsy, as he came nearer, gazed at him from head to foot, with a clear
dark eye, which had in it nothing either of the dogged sullenness or
cunning stealthiness that sometimes marks the male part of the
race,--often the fruit both of their own vices and the world's
harshness. There was something in the air and manner of the man, that
to so accurate an observer as Manners, spoke a great difference
between him and the general class of his people; but, to save a
repetition of description, it may be as well to say at once, that the
gipsy who now appeared was the same whom we have designated Pharold.
"Good-morning!" said Colonel Manners, as the other came near; "you
have hid your tents very completely here."
"Good-morning!" replied the gipsy, slightly knitting his brow, as he
saw the soldier's eye running over every part of their encampment with
some degree of curiosity; "Good-morning! It seems you were seeking me
or mine."
"I was so," replied Manners, still gazing with some interest upon the
old sand-pit and its picturesque tenants, with their blazing fire of
sticks, and its white smoke curling through the broken ground and amid
the scattered bushes.
"And what did you want with us, then?" asked Pharold, somewhat
impatiently; "you wanted something, or you would not have come here."
"I wish to have my fortune told," replied Manners with a smile,
excited equally by the impatience of the gipsy's tone, and by the
nature of his own errand.
The gipsy looked at him steadily, and then shook his head. "No, no,
no," said he; "you did not come for that. Never tell me, that you
would get out of your bed by daybreak, and climb a high hill, and seek
a bare common, at this hour, to have your fortune told--never tell me
that, Colonel Manners."
Manners started at hearing his own name pronounced familiarly by the
gipsy, though he knew the world, and all the tricks that accident and
confederacy can put upon us, too well to suppose that he who is
emphatically termed in Scripture "the prince of the power of the air"
had taken the trouble to send an account of his name and quality to a
gipsy on a common. Still, as it was unexpected, he was surprised, and
expressed it; but not in such a way as to make the gipsy believe more
fully than he had done at first, that he really gave credit to the
supernatural pretensions of his nation, and came there for the purpose
of consulting them upon his destiny.
"Pray how did you become acquainted with my name?" demanded Colonel
Manners, calmly. "I do not know that I ever saw you before?"
"Perhaps not," replied the gipsy; "but if you believe that I can tell
you what you will become hereafter, why should you be surprised that I
know what you are now?"
"I never said that I would believe what you told me," answered
Manners; "but I know that, as I have been scarcely two days in this
country, you must have been very expeditious in gaining my name.
However, it is a matter of small consequence: I came, as I said, to
have my fortune told according to your method. Will you do it?"
"It shall be done," said the gipsy, still gazing at him inquiringly.
"It shall de done, if you really desire it; but I know you men of the
world, and I cannot help thinking you came not on that errand alone. I
should think that Lord Dewry had sent you, did I not know that he went
away yesterday morning to Dimden, and then before midday back to the
hall."
"You are a very singular person," said Colonel Manners, with a smile,
"not only because you know every thing that is going on in the place,
as well as a village gossip, but because you will not believe the
truth when it is told you. Once more, then, my good friend, let me
assure you, that nobody sent me; and that my sole purpose is to have
my fortune told: nor should I stay here any longer, even for that
purpose, had I not promised another person to submit to the
infliction.
"So, so," said the gipsy; "so the fair lady you were walking with
yesterday in Morley Wood is more wise, or, as you would call it, more
credulous than you are. But do not look angry, gentleman. I will tell
you your fortune presently, and will tell it truly, if you will do me
a piece of service, of which I stand in need too--something that I
have promised to do, though not for a lady with dark eyes; and you
seem sent here on purpose to aid in it."
Now Manners was half amused and half angry; but it is probable the
anger would have got the better of the other feeling, had not his
curiosity been excited also by the language, the manners, and the
request of the gipsy, whose whole demeanour was something quite new to
him. He replied, however, "I never undertake to do any thing without
knowing the precise nature thereof; but if you will tell me what you
desire, and I find it reasonable, I will not, of course, refuse."
"Yes, yes! you shall hear what it is," answered the gipsy; "nor will
you find the request unreasonable. But come hither a little away from
the people, for they need not know it." Thus speaking, he led the way
towards the mound from which Manners had made his reconnoissance of
the common; and, as he went, he kept his right hand in his bosom, but
spoke not a word. At length, when they were fully out of earshot,
Manners himself stopped, thinking that he had humoured his companion's
caprices far enough.
"Now, my good fellow," he said, "nobody can either see or hear, unless
they follow for the purpose. Pray what is it you wish me to do for
you?"
"You are a friend of Mr. De Vaux, are you not?" said the gipsy
abruptly, stopping and turning round as Manners spoke.
"As far as esteeming him highly, and desiring to serve him with all my
heart, can make me so," answered Manners, now more particularly
surprised, "I believe I may call myself his dear friend: but what if I
be so?"
"If you be really a friend of Mr. Edward de Vaux," said the gipsy,
"you will not object to take a letter to him."
"Why," answered Manners, "although I am not exactly either a private
courier or a postman, yet if your request stops there, I can have no
objection to do as you desire; reserving to myself, of course, the
right of telling him where I got the letter, and the circumstances
that attended my receiving it."
"That you will do, if you please," replied the gipsy; "but the request
does not stop there. There are conditions in regard to the delivery of
the letter which you must observe, and that punctually."
Manners smiled. "This is all very extraordinary," he said; "you speak
in somewhat of a dictatorial tone, my good friend; and it is not easy
for me to comprehend what business one of your class and nation can
have with my friend De Vaux, so soon after his return from other
lands."
"Trouble not yourself with that, Colonel Manners," answered the gipsy;
and then added, seeing that something like a cloud was gathering on
his auditor's brow, "if I have offended you, sir, I am sorry: such was
not my purpose; and, believe me, I may know what is due both to you
and myself better than you think. You are the commander of one of the
King of England's regiments, and I am a poor gipsy; but you come to
make a request to me, for granting which--as every thing is barter or
robbery in this world--for granting which I require something of you.
So far we are as much equals as in the enjoyment of the free air, and
yonder bright sunshine, and this piece of common ground. Whether there
be any other difference between us, in point of higher or lower, God
knows, and he alone. Thus, then, hear me patiently, while I tell you
the conditions of my bargain; and afterward I will do your bidding
concerning your future fortunes--whether you esteem my skill or not,
being your business, and not mine, as you seek it without my offering
it."
"I believe you are right," replied Colonel Manners, beginning more
fully to appreciate the character of him with whom he spoke; "go on,
and let me hear your conditions in regard to the delivery of this
letter, which is, I suppose, the object that you hold in your bosom."
"It is not a pistol," said the gipsy, producing the letter.
"I did not suppose that it was," replied Colonel Manners; "and had it
been so, it would have been a matter of much indifference to me: but
now for your conditions."
"They are few and simple," answered the gipsy; "I require, or request,
you to give this into Mr. De Vaux's own hand, and to choose a moment
when he is not only alone, but when he is likely to have an
opportunity of reading it in private; and though you may tell him when
and how you received it, and add what comments you like, you must not
indulge in the same tattle to other people; but must keep silence on
all concerning it."
"Your conditions are not very difficult," replied Colonel Manners; "I
will undertake them. Give me the letter. Upon my honour," he added,
seeing that Pharold hesitated, "I will do exactly as you have
desired."
The man gave him the letter, which was cleaner, neater, and, as far as
the address went, better written than the hands from which it came
would have led one to anticipate. The moment he had done so, Pharold
uttered a long, loud whistle, which brought a little yellow urchin of
ten years old to their side, as fast as a pair of bare feet could
carry him. "Thou mayst go," said the gipsy; "and make haste." The boy
set off like lightning on the road which led to the river, and the
gipsy again turned to Colonel Manners. "Give me your hand, sir," he
said.
Colonel Manners did as he desired, smiling while he did so at a
certain lurking feeling of the ridicule of his situation, which he
could not repress. "If any of my old fellow-soldiers were to see me
here," he thought, "taking counsel with a gipsy upon my future fate
and prospects, they would certainly think Charles Manners mad." The
gipsy, however, gazed seriously upon his hand, and then raised his
eyes to the other's face, without the slightest expression in his own
countenance which could raise a suspicion that he was seeking to play
upon credulity.
"Colonel Manners," said Pharold, "before I tell you what I read here,
listen to me for one moment. Most people who come to us on such an
errand smile as they give us their hand; some because they believe us
thoroughly, and affect by a laugh to show they do not believe at all;
while some, who really do not believe, smile out of vain conceit in
their own superior strength of mind: but do you remember that this
that we practise is, when properly practised, a science in which we
have ourselves the most confident faith. We never inquire afterward
whether what we have predicted has proved true or not, for we are
always sure that it must do so: but, at all events, such confidence in
our own knowledge cannot spring from nothing."
Manners could have easily found a reply in favour of his own side of
the question, but he did not think it worth while to argue logically
upon chiromancy with a gipsy, although that gipsy might be somewhat
superior to others of his tribe; and, therefore, without answering the
arguments of Pharold, he remained in silence, while the other again
turned a very steadfast glance upon his extended hand.
"Colonel Manners," said the gipsy at length, "if I read right, you
have been a fortunate man."
"And, in some respects, an unfortunate one," rejoined his auditor,
"though, in truth, I have no great reason to complain."
"Far more fortunate than unfortunate," answered the gipsy. "Here are
but three crosses in all your life as yet; two so near the beginning,
that you could not have felt them; and one--a deep one--much more
lately."
Colonel Manners smiled. "In the past you are certainly not far wrong:
but it is the future I wish to hear: what of it?"
"You mock us, sir," said the gipsy, eying him. "However, you shall
hear your fate as it is. You shall be fortunate and unfortunate."
"That is the common lot of human nature," rejoined Colonel Manners.
"But herein does your fate differ from the common lot of human
nature," replied the gipsy: "you shall be no longer fortunate in those
things wherein you have hitherto found success; for you shall do all
that you think you will not do; and prosper where you neither hope nor
strive."
"That is certainly a strange fate," answered Manners; "for I have ever
found that success is a coy goddess, who needs all our efforts to
obtain her smiles, and even then gives them but sparingly."
"It _is_ a strange fate, and yet, in some sense, it is not," answered
the gipsy; "your painters rightly represent Fortune as a woman, though
they might as well have left her eyes unbandaged; for it is neither
new nor marvellous to see woman fly from those that pursue her, and
cast herself into the arms of those who care not for her smiles. And
yet the fate written on that hand is strange, too; for it speaks of
fortunes as fair without effort, for the future, as those of the past
have been rendered by toil and exertion. It is a strange fate; but,
nevertheless it shall be yours: and now, forget not my words, but,
when you find them verified, remember him that spoke them."
"But are you going to tell me no more?" demanded Colonel Manners: "I
would fain have you come a little more to particulars, my good friend.
One can make but little of these broad generalities."
"One can make nothing to laugh at," answered the gipsy, "and therefore
I shall keep to them, though, perhaps, I could tell you more. Remember
them, however, and, as you will soon find them true, lay them to your
heart, sir, and let them teach you to believe, that a thing is not
false because you do not understand it; that there may be truths
without the range either of your knowledge or of your faculties--some
that you cannot comprehend, because they have not been explained to
you; and some that, if they were explained to you a thousand times,
your mind is too narrow to conceive--and yet they are."
"I wish, my good friend, that I could send you to converse with
Voltaire," said Colonel Manners. "Who is he?" demanded Pharold; "I do
not know him."
"No," replied Manners; "I dare say not: but he is a famous wit, who
dabbles in philosophy, and seems inclined to teach the world, by his
example, if not by his precepts, that man should credit nothing that
he cannot understand."
"And what should I do with him'?" demanded the gipsy, frowning: "I
think you are mocking me--is it not so?"
"No, on my honour," replied Colonel Manners; "I am not mocking you. On
the contrary, I think you a very extraordinary person, and fitted for
a different station from that in which I find you. Whether you
yourself believe that which you have told me concerning my future
fortune, or not, I thank you for having gratified me; and, at all
events, I have derived from your conversation more that I shall
remember long, than I anticipated when I came here. Will you accept of
that?"
Colonel Manners offered him one of those beautiful golden pieces which
are now, I fear me, lost to the world for ever, and which were then
called guineas. But the gipsy put it away. "No," he said; "you have
undertaken to fulfil my request, and I have complied with yours. We
owe each other nothing, then. Farewell!" and, turning on his heel, he
left Colonel Manners to descend the hill, thinking him more
extraordinary than ever, from the last very ungipsy-like act, by which
he had terminated their conversation.
The sun was now much higher than when Manners had trod that path
before; for, according to his usual custom, the gracious luminary
seemed to have run more quickly at his first rising than he does after
having climbed the steep hill of heaven; and the wayfarer began to
think that he might be late at Mrs. Falkland's breakfast-table, where
cold eggs and lukewarm coffee were the just punishments of those who
linger long abed. As he had closed the park gate, however, and had not
the key, he was obliged to go round and enter by the other side of the
house; but this proceeding, at all events, tended to solve one mystery
connected with his late interview. In the hall the first object he
beheld was the little gipsy boy whom he had seen with Pharold on the
hill; and he now found him in conversation with Mrs. Falkland herself,
who appeared to be asking after some of the Egyptian fraternity who
were ill. Old Peter stood behind, keeping a wary eye upon the boy,
whom he justly considered a very promising eleve in no inferior school
of petty larceny; and as Colonel Manners approached, Mrs. Falkland
terminated her inquiries, and made over her little companion to the
care of the footman, with orders to give him something and send him
away; an order, the latter part of which was complied with in a more
summary manner than she anticipated, as soon as her back was turned.
"Good-morning, Colonel Manners," she said, as they walked towards the
breakfast-room; "you find me with a curious little companion: but the
fact is, that, while you were all out walking yesterday, a poor gipsy
woman accidentally fell down from the high bank close by the house,
and was brought in here, completely stunned. The village apothecary
was away; and, as I endeavour to enact my Lady Bountiful, I did what I
could for the poor creature, who soon recovered. We had half a dozen
of her tribe in the servant's hall, however; and, much to the butler's
and Peter's surprise--and, I must confess, to my own also--when they
went away, nothing was missing. According to a promise made by one of
them, they have sent me down that little boy this morning to tell me
that the poor woman is now quite well. I wished to have despatched the
apothecary to her, and offered to do so as soon as he returned; but
they seemed to have an invincible repugnance to all the professors of
the healing art."
"All people, I believe, who enjoy very good health," replied Colonel
Manners, "feel the same towards the learned doctors--the very sight of
one reminds us of losing one of the best blessings of Heaven. However,
the meeting with that little gipsy gentleman here explains something
which I might have made a mystery of, had I not heard your account of
your yesterday's interview; for this morning I had a long conversation
with a gipsy on the hill--a very singular person--who addressed me at
once by name, and seemed perfectly well acquainted with my being at
your house."
"Oh, your servant was present yesterday," replied Mrs. Falkland, "and,
with all the dexterity of an old soldier, gave us very great
assistance in bringing the poor woman to herself. I remarked, too,
that her gipsy companions did but little, and contented themselves
with standing round, asking irrelevant questions of the servants,
which, of course, in that temple of tittle-tattle, a servant's hall,
they found somebody willing to answer; so that I dare say there was
nothing supernatural in your name being known on the hill. But how
came you, Colonel Manners," she added, with a smile, "how came you in
such deep consultation with a gipsy at this hour of the morning? You
surely have not been having your fortune told?"
"I must plead guilty, I am afraid," replied Colonel Manners; "but if
the fault be a very grievous one, I must lay the blame upon Miss
Falkland, as it was under her special injunctions that I went."
"Indeed!" said Mrs. Falkland; "and to answer what object?"
"Oh, if you mean Miss Falkland's object, I really cannot tell," he
replied; "and my object was certainly a very foolish one, but one that
leads many a man to do a still more foolish thing: I mean, it was to
prove that I was not afraid."
"And pray, what was the result?" demanded Mrs. Falkland; but by this
time they were at the breakfast-room door, and Colonel Manners
declared that he would not communicate his fate to any one before he
revealed it to Miss Falkland in general consistory. This he had soon
an opportunity of doing: and the whole business was laughed at gayly
enough. It is wonderful how light a little merriment soon makes every
thing appear; and this is the reason why, in moments of mirth and
cheerfulness, so many secrets are revealed that one would often give
worlds to shut up again in the casket of one's own breast. Let wise
diplomatists keep far from merriment; for a light laugh or a gay
witticism, whose idle wings seemed hardly strong enough to flutter it
across the table, has often taken a weighty secret on its back, and
flown away with it, never to return. Now, the letter that the gipsy
had given Colonel Manners for his friend he had believed might be of
some importance, as long as he was alone; but every gay word that was
spoken on the subject of gipsies and fortune-telling took away
something from its weight in his estimation; and had he been only
restrained by a sense of its importance, he might have delivered the
letter before breakfast was over, and made a jest of it. It has never
been said that Colonel Manners was perfect; and though his mind was
strong, it certainly was not without a full share of human weaknesses.
Colonel Manners, however, was restrained by something besides a sense
of the letter's importance--he had given his word to deliver it in a
particular manner; and, whatever else he might do in the way of
frailties, he never forgot a promise, though, in the present instance,
it was long ere he found an opportunity of fulfilling the one he had
made the gipsy on the hill.