My imagination
Carries no favour in it but Bertram's;
I am undone, there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away.
--All's Well that Ends Well.
At the hour which he had appointed the preceding evening the
indefatigable lawyer was seated by a good fire and a pair of wax
candles, with a velvet cap on his head and a quilted silk nightgown on
his person, busy arranging his memoranda of proofs and indications
concerning the murder of Frank Kennedy. An express had also been
despatched to Mr. Mac-Morlan, requesting his attendance at Woodbourne
as soon as possible on business of importance. Dinmont, fatigued with
the events of the evening before, and finding the accommodations of
Woodbourne much preferable to those of Mac-Guffog, was in no hurry to
rise. The impatience of Bertram might have put him earlier in motion,
but Colonel Mannering had intimated an intention to visit him in his
apartment in the morning, and he did not 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 powers of tuition. But she had grown up under his eye,
and had been gradually emancipated from his government by increase in
years and knowledge, and a latent sense of his own inferior tact in
manners, whereas his first ideas went to take up Harry pretty nearly
where he had left him. From the same feelings of reviving authority he
indulged himself in what was to him a profusion of language; and as
people seldom speak more than usual without exposing themselves, he
gave those whom he addressed plainly to understand that, while he
deferred implicitly to the opinions and commands, if they chose to
impose them, of almost every one whom he met with, it was under an
internal conviction that in the article of eru-di-ti-on, as he usually
pronounced the word, he was infinitely superior to them all put
together. At present, however, this intimation fell upon heedless ears,
for the brother and sister were too deeply engaged in asking and
receiving intelligence concerning their former fortunes to attend much
to the worthy Dominie. When Colonel Mannering left Bertram he went to
Julia's dressing-room and dismissed her attendant. 'My dear sir,' she
said as he entered, 'you have forgot our vigils last night, and have
hardly allowed me time to comb my hair, although you must be sensible
how it stood on end at the various wonders which took place.'
'It is with the inside of your head that I have some business at
present, Julia; I will return the outside to the care of your Mrs.
Mincing in a few minutes.'
'Lord, papa,' replied Miss Mannering, 'think how entangled all my ideas
are, and you to propose to comb them out in a few minutes! If Mincing
were to do so in her department she would tear half the hair out of my
head.'
'Well then, tell me,' said the Colonel, 'where the entanglement lies,
which I will try to extricate with due gentleness?'
'O, everywhere,' said the young lady; 'the whole is a wild dream.'
'Well then, I will try to unriddle it.' He gave a brief sketch of the
fate and prospects of Bertram, to which Julia listened with an interest
which she in vain endeavoured to disguise. 'Well,' concluded her
father, 'are your ideas on the subject more luminous?'
'More confused than ever, my dear sir,' said Julia. 'Here is this young
man come from India, after he had been supposed dead, like Aboulfouaris
the great voyager to his sister Canzade and his provident brother Hour.
I am wrong in the story, I believe--Canzade was his wife; but Lucy may
represent the one and the Dominie the other. And then this lively
crack-brained Scotch lawyer appears like a pantomime at the end of a
tragedy. And then how delightful it will be if Lucy gets back her
fortune.'
'Now I think,' said the Colonel, 'that the most mysterious part of the
business is, that Miss Julia Mannering, who must have known her
father's anxiety about the fate of this young man Brown, or Bertram, as
we must now call him, should have met him when Hazlewood's accident
took place, and never once mentioned to her father a word of the
matter, but suffered the search to proceed against this young gentleman
as a suspicious character and assassin.'
Julia, much of whose courage had been hastily assumed to meet the
interview with her father, was now unable to rally herself; she hung
down her head in silence, after in vain attempting to utter a denial
that she recollected Brown when she met him.
'No answer! Well, Julia,' continued her father, gravely but kindly,
'allow me to ask you, Is this the only time you have seen Brown since
his return from India? Still no answer. I must then naturally suppose
that it is not the first time. Still no reply. Julia Mannering, will
you have the kindness to answer me? Was it this young man who came
under your window and conversed with you during your residence at
Mervyn Hall? Julia, I command--I entreat you to be candid.'
Miss Mannering raised her head. 'I have been, sir--I believe I am
still--very foolish; and it is perhaps more hard upon me that I must
meet this gentleman, who has been, though not the cause entirely, yet
the accomplice, of my folly, in your presence.' Here she made a full
stop.
'I am to understand, then,' said Mannering, 'that this was the author
of the serenade at Mervyn Hall?'
There was something in this allusive change of epithet that gave Julia
a little more courage. 'He was indeed, sir; and if I am very wrong, as
I have often thought, I have some apology.'
'And what is that?' answered the Colonel, speaking quick, and with
something of harshness.
'I will not venture to name it, sir; but (she opened a small cabinet,
and put some letters into his hands) I will give you these, that you
may see how this intimacy began, and by whom it was encouraged.'
Mannering took the packet to the window--his pride forbade a more
distant retreat. He glanced at some passages of the letters with an
unsteady eye and an agitated mind; his stoicism, however, came in time
to his aid--that philosophy which, rooted in pride, yet frequently
bears the fruits of virtue. He returned towards his daughter with as
firm an air as his feelings permitted him to assume.
'There is great apology for you, Julia, as far as I can judge from a
glance at these letters; you have obeyed at least one parent. Let us
adopt a Scotch proverb the Dominie quoted the other day--"Let bygones
be bygones, and fair play for the future." I will never upbraid you
with your past want of confidence; do you judge of my future intentions
by my actions, of which hitherto you have surely had no reason to
complain. Keep these letters; they were never intended for my eye, and
I would not willingly read more of them than I have done, at your
desire and for your exculpation. And now, are we friends? Or rather, do
you understand me?'
'O, my dear, generous father,' said Julia, throwing herself into his
arms, 'why have I ever for an instant misunderstood you?'
'No more of that, Julia,' said the Colonel; 'we have both been to
blame. He that is too proud to vindicate the affection and confidence
which he conceives should be given without solicitation, must meet
much, and perhaps deserved, disappointment. It is enough that one
dearest and most regretted member of my family has gone to the grave
without knowing me; let me not lose the confidence of a child who ought
to love me if she really loves herself.'
'O, no danger, no fear!' answered Julia; 'let me but have your
approbation and my own, and there is no rule you can prescribe so
severe that I will not follow.'
'Well, my love,' kissing her forehead, 'I trust we shall not call upon
you for anything too heroic. With respect to this young gentleman's
addresses, I expect in the first place that all clandestine
correspondence, which no young woman can entertain for a moment without
lessening herself in her own eyes and in those of her lover--I request,
I say, that clandestine correspondence of every kind may be given up,
and that you will refer Mr. Bertram to me for the reason. You will
naturally wish to know what is to be the issue of such a reference. In
the first place, I desire to observe this young gentleman's character
more closely than circumstances, and perhaps my own prejudices, have
permitted formerly. I should also be glad to see his birth established.
Not that I am anxious about his getting the estate of Ellangowan,
though such a subject is held in absolute indifference nowhere except
in a novel; but certainly Henry Bertram, heir of Ellangowan, whether
possessed of the property of his ancestors or not, is a very different
person from Vanbeest Brown, the son of nobody at all. His fathers, Mr.
Pleydell tells me, are distinguished in history as following the
banners of their native princes, while our own fought at Cressy and
Poirtiers. In short, I neither give nor withhold my approbation, but I
expect you will redeem past errors; and, as you can now unfortunately
only have recourse to ONE parent, that you will show the duty of a
child by reposing that confidence in me which I will say my inclination
to make you happy renders a filial debt upon your part.'
The first part of this speech affected Julia a good deal, the
comparative merit of the ancestors of the Bertrams and Mannerings
excited a secret smile, but the conclusion was such as to soften a
heart peculiarly open to the feelings of generosity. 'No, my dear sir,'
she said, extending her hand,' receive my faith, that from this moment
you shall be the first person consulted respecting what shall pass in
future between Brown--I mean Bertram--and me; and that no engagement
shall be undertaken by me excepting what you shall immediately know and
approve of. May I ask if Mr. Bertram is to continue a guest at
Woodbourne?'
'Certainly,' said the Colonel, 'while his affairs render it advisable.'
'Then, sir, you must be sensible, considering what is already past,
that he will expect some reason for my withdrawing, I believe I must
say the encouragement, which he may think I have given.'
'I expect, Julia,' answered Mannering, 'that he will respect my roof,
and entertain some sense perhaps of the services I am desirous to
render him, and so will not insist upon any course of conduct of which
I might have reason to complain; and I expect of you that you will make
him sensible of what is due to both.'
'Then, sir, I understand you, and you shall be implicitly obeyed.'
'Thank you, my love; my anxiety (kissing her) is on your account. Now
wipe these witnesses from your eyes, and so to breakfast.'